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PHARRELL WILLIAMS

E A RY Y

How to Give Back Rockefeller

CANNABIS (It’s Top Drawer!)

WALL STREET’S Next Barbarians

The New Rules of Big Money

What

THE NANNY Knew

NAME DROPPING Do’s & Don’ts

YACHT GIRL SUMMER

LET’S BE GOOD

Lessons in Lifetime Philanthropy

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T&C H I S T O R Y

2014

J O H N BA L D E S SA R I I N L.A. Seven years ago we devoted our entire September issue to the creative world of Los Angeles, covering—with the help of guest editor Liz Goldwyn—the eclectic community of upstarts, geniuses, and icons turning this metropolis into “the new capital of cool.” Among them, of course, was the artist John Baldessari, photographed for T&C by Max Vadukul. With a vibrant and witty style, Baldessari defied conventional boundaries and helped usher in a new era for the city’s contemporary art scene. In June, L.A.’s Sprüth Magers Gallery will honor the late artist (he died in January 2020 at the age of 88) with an exhibition of his final series of 30 paintings.

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C ONTE NT S /SUM M E R E S TA B L I S H E D 1 8 4 6

F E AT U R E S 60

PHARRELL WILLIAMS How does music’s resident polymath find perfect harmony? By giving back where he grew up.

BY ALEX BHATTACHARJI

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HUGH EVANS The only thing bigger than his philanthropic ambition is his Rolodex. BY JULIA GILLARD

72

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MS. ROCKEFELLER’S HEMP FARM A plan to save the planet and feel pretty darn relaxed while doing it. BY LISA GABOR

TARAJI P. HENSON Mental health is not something people want to talk about. The actress has something she’d like to discuss. BY EMIL WILBEKIN

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EDITOR’S LETTER . . . . . . . . . . 22 #VERYT&C . . . . . . . . . . . 26 STARS & SIGNS . . . . . . . . . . 59 INVALUABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Purse with purpose: Proceeds from the Red Initials Insignia Bag support the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

CH CAROLINA HERRERA HANDBAG ($1,580), CHCAROLINAHERRERA.COM

MARLO THOMAS She is America’s most steadfast philanthropist.

Here’s why she might be its most successful.

BY NELL SCOVELL

76

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAMES At long last, it’s time for all of us, from beginners to gold-medalists, to get back on the horse.

BY ALIX BROWNE

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THE NEW RULES OF BIG MONEY

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FREE TO BE...

YOU AND ME Play this classic, turn up the volume, and dance to the beat of your own drum. Our soundtrack to summer fashion starts here.

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D O N P E N N Y, S T Y L E D BY M I A KO K AT O H

Is there a seismic shift happening on Wall Street, or is history just repeating itself?

CO L LEC TI O N

©Photograph: patriceschreyer.com

Women

NEW Y ORK · 6 97 FI FT H AVEN UE B E T WE E N 54 TH & 5 5 TH S TR E ET · 2 1 2 3 96 17 3 5 L A S V EG AS · T HE FO RUM S HOPS AT C AES AR S PAL ACE · 7 0 2 3 69 17 3 5

C ONTE NT S /SUM M E R E S TA B L I S H E D 1 8 4 6

D E PA R T M E N T S SO CIAL NET WORK

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HOW TO NAME-DROP Naming rights have long been the gold standard of high-level giving, but maybe these days anonymity is better than infamy.

Arm in arm: Proceeds from the sale of select David Yurman bracelets will be directed to the River Fund and Unity Fund.

O UT & AB OU T 33

MOVIES One way to tell summer is back: a movie musical in theaters that will make you want to dance in the streets.

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DAVID YURMAN BRACELETS ($395 EACH), DAVIDYURMAN.COM

PORTFOLIO The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates a landmark birthday with a once-ina-lifetime portfolio.

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THEATER The king of the West End has a new princess—and you can see her live and in person.

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ART NFTs may be the art world’s hot new offering, but displaying these digital trophies comes with complications.

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PERFORMER The only thing longer and more storied than Ben Vereen’s career is his memory.

ST YLE SPY 42

LA DOLCE VITA Why we’re gaga, again, for the sensual pleasures of classic Italian glamour.

ON OUR COVER:

THE MUSE Fran’s philosophy: To thine own self— and Moschino—be true. It may be time to live by the Nanny’s rules.

BR I GH T TH ING S 47

WATCH HOSPITAL It’s tucked away in the Switzerland of the Susquehanna Valley.

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POWER CUFFS Cuffs have a lot to say—let them speak.

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TR AV EL 53

OK, HERE WE GO!?

All the amazing, beautiful, longed-for places we think we can see this summer.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS , PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICAIAH CARTER .

CHANEL POLO; WILLIAMS’S OWN JACOB & CO. NECKLACES. STYLED

BY MATTHEW HENSON. PROP STYLING BY STEVE HARIVEL AT ACE PROPS. PRODUCTION SERVICES PROVIDED BY SHAKE PRODUCTIONS. TARAJI P. HENSON , PHOTOGRAPHED BY ERIK CARTER . MICHAEL KORS COLLECTION VEST AND DRESS; BULGARI BRACELET. STYLED BY JASON BOLDEN. HAIR BY TYM WALLACE FOR MASTERMIND MANAGEMENT GROUP. MAKEUP BY ASHUNTA SHERIFF. PRODUCTION SERVICES PROVIDED BY VIEWFINDERS LA. HUGH EVANS , PHOTOGRAPHED BY AMANDA DEMME . RALPH LAUREN JACKET, SWEATER, AND TROUSERS. STYLED

BY ALISON EDMOND. HAIR AND GROOMING BY JOHNNIE SAPONG FOR LEONOR GREYL AND BOY DE CHANEL AT THE WALL GROUP. PRODUCTION SERVICES PROVIDED BY VIEWFINDERS LA. SHOT ON LOCATION AT SOFI STADIUM. MARLO THOMAS , PHOTOGRAPHED BY AMANDA DEMME .

MAX MARA DRESS; TIFFANY & CO. ELSA PERETTI EARRINGS. STYLED BY RYAN YOUNG. HAIR BY STEVEN RICE. MAKEUP BY ERIC BARNARD. TAILORING

BY JESSICA YUEN

D O N P E N N Y, S T Y L E D BY M I A KO K AT O H

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EDITOR’ S L ET TER Below: Hugh Evans, photographed for T&C at SoFi Stadium. Far right: Pharrell Williams, photographed for T&C in Miami, March 2021.

hings change. So do cover shoot dates, takeoff times, health ordinances, and the availability of Look 39. What never does: the steadfast commitment, calm, and kindness of the team that put together our eighth annual philanthropy issue. Thank you, Darrick Harris, for overseeing four cover shoots in three cities, and for not telling me the half of it. Thank you to our fashion team—Dania Lucero Ortiz, MaryKate Boylan, Cassandra Hogan—for shifting entire concepts and DHL delivery dates with the utmost cool. Thank you, Kristin Fitzpatrick, for the gorgeous layouts, and Ashleigh Macdonald-Bennett, for letting us navigate every twist with only the gentlest reminder of deadlines. Thank you, Special Projects and Danielle Stein Chizzik and Adam Rathe, for another inspiring year of T&C Philanthropy.

Thank you to the production companies on these shoots, particularly Viewfinders and Dana Brockman, and to the visionaries behind the cameras: Amanda Demme, Erik Carter, and Micaiah Carter. And to the entire T&C family. That their passion has managed to translate through our screens for more than a year now astonishes me but also reminds me of how much we believe in this brand and in our once-in-acareer team. Now, back to philanthropy. It is, as our coverline attests, about being good. To our communities, to ourselves, to each other, to our children. Let’s do it.

T

STELLENEVOLANDES @HEARST.COM @THEREALSTELLENE @STELLENEVOLANDES

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CONSCIOUS UNCOUPLING? In May, when news of Bill and Melinda Gates’s divorce hit, speculation in the nonprofit world reached a fever pitch. Town & Country checked in with Benjamin Soskis, senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. (Note: The institute’s work has been supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)

How do you expect the Gates Foundation to change as a result of the divorce?

BS: It’s worth pointing out that at the foundation there had already been, for several years now, a differentiation of focuses between Bill and Melinda.

The foundation has been able to absorb a form of decoupling already, so it’s quite possible it could continue to do so.

What are those different priorities?

BS: Bill has focused on global health for decades and, more recently, on combating climate change.

Meanwhile, Melinda has determined that gender equity and girls’ health could have huge consequences in domestic and global spaces, so she has pushed women’s empowerment both inside the foundation and in her own LLC (Pivotal Ventures).

But perhaps the most striking difference is in their approaches. Melinda has been candid about needing to temper Bill’s rough edges socially—and also philanthropically—and the ways in which his technocratic, data-centric approaches needed a human, humane, and community-rooted supplement. Many observers agree that her influence was

positive for the foundation as well as a very public example of the reconciliation of two key approaches that are often viewed as opposites.

Will the divorce affect the amount of money that flows into the Gates Foundation?

BS: It certainly complicates things. The amount of Gates money that’s not in the foundation is considerably larger than the amount in the foundation.

Is there any precedent for a divorced couple running a sizable foundation together effectively?

BS: The truth is, this whole model of giving while living is pretty new. The most consequential development in philanthropy in the last half century is people making money early in life and becoming philanthropic as they go. Philanthropy is no longer an end-of-life activity like golf; it’s key to a wealthy person’s identity. So life cycle events—marriages, births, divorces—are suddenly very influential.

Lots of people are bringing up the MacKenzie Scott/Jeff Bezos comparison.

BS: Yes, but MacKenzie Scott emerged publicly as a philanthropist, with an independent approach, as a consequence of the divorce. Melinda as a public figure and philanthropist preexisted this split.

One notable point about Bezos is that all the philanthropy Scott has done in the wake of their divorce has been seen by many as a kind of referendum on or rebuke of Bezos, on what he has or hasn’t done with his money. It’ll be interesting to see if people read similarly into Melinda’s future decisions.

AMANDA DEMME (EVANS); MICAIAH CARTER (WILLIAMS); KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES FOR ROBIN HOOD (GATESES)

A Good REMINDER

Left: A necklace by Fred Leighton and Francisco Costa, featuring antique cut diamonds, yellow diamond briolettes, and 19th-century gold chains.

The piece, inspired by the Amazon’s Yawanawa tribe, will be on view at Phillips Southampton gallery from June 17 through 20 and will go to auction June 25 to benefit Conservation International.

ROSE DES VENTS, ROSE CÉLESTE AND MIMIROSE COLLECTIONS Yellow gold, diamonds, mother-of-pearl and onyx.

T&C STELLENE VOLANDES Editor in Chief

ERIN HOBDAY Executive Managing Editor

KLARA GLOWCZEWSKA Executive Travel Editor

NORMAN VANAMEE Articles Director

KRISTIN FITZPATRICK Design Director

DANIA LUCERO ORTIZ Fashion & Accessories Director

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ADAM RATHE Arts Editor

APRIL LONG Beauty Director

CAROLINE HALLEMANN Digital News Director

Chief Visual Content Director, Hearst Magazines ALIX CAMPBELL

EMIL WILBEKIN

Visual Director DARRICK HARRIS

Writer, “Let’s Be Good to Ourselves,” page 64

Executive Director, Editorial Business Development JOYANN KING

NELL SCOVELL

Writer, “Let’s Be Good to Our Children,” page 72

Visual Editor NELIDA MORTENSEN MUST-SEE MOVIE?

Respect, the Aretha Franklin biopic featuring Jennifer Hudson and directed by Liesl Tommy. It feels right for the times: Black excellence, activism, women’s empowerment, and soul music.

Senior Fashion Editor MARYKATE BOYLAN

Senior Digital Editor ROXANNE ADAMIYATT

Style & Interiors Writer OLIVIA HOSKEN Assistant Managing Editor ASHLEIGH MACDONALD-BENNETT Credits Editor CAITLIN MULLEN Associate Editor LEENA KIM

Assistant Editor LUCIA TONELLI

Fashion Assistant CASSANDRA HOGAN

PAMPERING PRODUCT?

I’m not a beauty product gal, but I do splurge on La Mer’s Broad Spectrum Protecting Fluid—it’s lightweight, not greasy. $95, CREMEDELAMER.COM

Assistant to the Editor in Chief LAUREN TAPPAN Wine Critic JAY MCINERNEY Editor at Large VICKY WARD European Editor at Large MARTINA MONDADORI SARTOGO VP, Content, Hearst Magazines BROOKE SIEGEL Executive Director, Talent, Hearst Magazines RANDI PECK Deputy Art Director CHIUN LEE

Senior Designer MICHAEL STILLWELL

Designer ARIANNA CANELON Digital Imaging Specialist KEVIN ARNOLD

SELF-CARE MOTTOS?

I’ll be wearing Black designer BLBNKS Fundamentals’ sweatshirt, which has five reminders to be love.

Copy Chief JAMES LOCHART Research Chief LINDA A. CROWLEY Associate Research Editor KAREN LUBECK

SELF-CARE INSTRUCTIONS HOODIE ($95), BLBNKS.COM

PR Manager KYRA TAYLOR

DAILY ROUTINE?

Taking long walks into Boston while listening to my favorite podcast, Ruined. As restrictions lift, my routes are getting more adventurous.

Editorial Business Director CAROL LUZ Editorial Business Manager KATE REMULLA HEARST VISUAL GROUP

Visual Director DAVID MURPHY Deputy Visual Director FIONA LENNON Senior Visual Editor JENNIFER NEWMAN Associate Visual Editor SAMEET SHARMA Visual Assistant GIANCARLOS KUNHARDT CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

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An Aperol Spritz—with a twist of grapefruit. It’s like sunshine in a glass.

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REQUIRED READING?

Dr. Boardman’s Everyday Vitality is a reminder that meaningful contributions to society make for better days.

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F O M O AT M O M A / I N S I D E J O H N WAT E R S / S I X- F I G U R E P OW D E R R O O M S

How to NAME-DROP

arah Arison could have engraved her name on almost anything she wanted at a new 40,000-square-foot nonprofit arts complex in New Haven, Connecticut— but she turned down every offer.

Arison wanted to help raise $15 million for NXTHVN (pronounced “Next Haven”), a creative incubator in the shadow of Yale’s steeples, because she believed in its mission to foster the careers of artists and curators of

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color. However, when she pledged $600,000 to fund a 60-seat black box theater over three years, she suggested the organization offer the naming rights to someone else.

“I was happy to give the organization the opportunity to use those naming rights for continued fundraising with another donor who might be motivated by that,” says Arison, an heir to the Carnival Cruise Line fortune, president of the $422 million Arison Arts

Foundation, and a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. Traditionally, naming rights have been viewed by the rich and civic-minded as a way to imprint their names on history while helping the organizations they support to build endowments, acquire masterpieces, and undertake ambitious expansion plans.

But in recent years the names on the walls of major institutions have come into focus—and

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

Naming rights have long been the gold standard of high-level giving, but maybe these days anonymity is better than infamy. BY KATYA KAZAKINA

chairman of the board of trustin a statement,“The man has been ees at MoMA, which had dead for 32 years… None of his named its film center for Black philanthropic gifts were in any and his wife Debra after they way connected to opioids or to made a $40 million donation deceptive medical marketing.”

The New York State in 2018. Black had received Some insiders worry that Theater at Lincoln Center was renamed for David critical attention related to this intensified scrutiny of H. Koch, the late oil his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the donors will have a chilling and gas billionaire, in late financier and convicted effect at a time when cultural recognition of a 2008 gift of sex offender; he also stepped institutions desperately need down as CEO of private equity funding. In times of crisis, says giant Apollo Global ManageAdrian Ellis, founder of AEA ment after it was revealed that Consulting, which specializes he had paid Epstein $158 milin strategic and operational lion for tax and estate advice in planning in the cultural sec2008 following Epstein’s conviction for solictor, “parading one’s wealth can be seen as bad iting a minor. A spokeswoman for MoMA— taste… You may want to keep your head down.” merica’s most prominent people have which has also been asked to remove the late Fittingly, over the past year some patrons been slapping their names on university architect Philip Johnson’s name from spaces have declined not only naming opportunities libraries, museums, and hospital wings for gendue to allegations of racism—didn’t respond but even public announcements of their gifts. erations, but as wealth exploded globally over “There was reluctance to announce capital the past two decades, the chance to buy a bit of to requests seeking comment. gifts with names associated with them because immortality turned into a competitive sport.

“I bet the amount Black has given is vast,” of the environment,” says David Resnicow, Billionaires David Geffen, David H. says a trustee of another New York museum president of Resnicow and Associates, which Koch, and Stephen Schwarzman clamored who asked not to be named. “What do you advises cultural institutions on communicado if you’re on that board? What’s the best to inscribe their names on buildings, gallertions and strategic planning. “It would feel ies, and plazas at the Museum of Modern Art, thing for the museum? I’m glad I’m not sitwrong to announce a big gift when everyting in those discussions.” the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the thing has shut down.”

Black isn’t the only one facing criticism.

New York Public Library. Chicago is home Private contributions accounted for about Protests against the Sackler family, one of the to the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Scia third of the revenue of U.S. museums before ence and Industry, and in Los Angeles the largest benefactors of museums in the U.S. the pandemic, according to a 2018 report by soon-to-open Academy Museum and Europe, have roiled the art the Association of Art Museum Directors. of Motion Pictures will have the world in recent years in the wake In recent months, patrons rallied to ensure Dolby Family Terrace, the Barbra of revelations about the family’s that their pet causes survived, but in less visStreisand Bridge, and the Saban role in the opioid crisis. Two ible ways. Capital campaigns were put on a years ago the Louvre removed Building, named for philanback burner as institutional priorities shifted. thropists Haim and Cheryl in the Sackler name from one Operating needs, which don’t involve drumgratitude for a $50 million gift. building, and many museL.A.’s Academy beating, came front and center. ums, including the Tate and Even restrooms are hot comMuseum of Motion Pictures is home to the Of course, naming rights aren’t entirely modities; at the New Museum, the National Portrait Gallery Dolby Family Terrace, about ego. “Donors are absolutely the pillars four public bathrooms are in London, have pledged to the Barbra Streisand of private institutions, and we have to be welnamed after Jerome L. Stern, stop accepting gifts from the Bridge, and the Saban Building, named coming to them, particularly in the U.S.,” says the venture capitalist who died family. The Met is reviewing for philanthropists Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon in 2017 but had made a sixwhether to remove the SackHaim and Cheryl R. Guggenheim Museum. Social recognition ler name from the wing that figure gift a decade earlier. after a gift of has fueled philanthropy for centuries, which houses the Temple of DenBut amid the coronavirus is why offering naming rights has been one dur, and London’s Serpentine pandemic and social justice of the most powerful fundraising tools. Not Galleries removed the Sackprotests, some patrons have only does it acknowledge a donor’s generosler name from its website for begun to think twice about ity, it inspires others to give. future exhibitions, saying it displaying their largesse, while Naming is also a step toward “a kind was part of a rebranding campaign in which others have found themselves in a position— of immortality,” says Tom Finkelpearl, forthe Serpentine Sackler Gallery will now be you might call it “canceled”—where their mer director of the Queens Museum, who known as the Serpentine North Gallery. name does more harm than good. Being credserved as commissioner of the New York ited as “Anonymous,” once a sign of WASPy This trend is not something every memDepartment of Cultural Affairs from 2014 humility, may start to seem like a safe bet in ber of the Sackler family—which has multiple to 2020. “David Koch is dead, but you see an era when donors are publicly pilloried by branches with varying degrees of involvement his name all over the city.” The New York artists and armchair critics for their politics, in the pharmaceutical business—agrees with.

State Theater at Lincoln Center was renamed social scandals, and business practices.

In 2019, after Tufts University removed the for Koch, the oil and gas billionaire, after a In March billionaire Leon Black Sackler name from five of its facilities, Jillian $100 million gift in 2008. In 2014 the announced that he would step down as Sackler, the widow of Arthur M. Sackler, said increasingly under scrutiny.

Arison isn’t alone in rejecting naming opportunities. NXTHVN has raised nearly $5 million, but not a single donor has asked to have his or her name placed on its available and eminently nameable spaces, including studios, apartments, offices, a terrace, and a café. “It’s unlike any other campaign I’ve run,” says Rodney Franks, a fundraising consultant who has been in the field for more than 25 years. What’s happening at this nonprofit (co-founded by art star Titus Kaphar) could be a sign that the conversation around naming rights, which were once seen as an unparalleled status symbol, is changing.

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One trend is so-called sunset provisions, which set a time limit for naming rights. Currently, attorneys general in 23 states are trying to pave the way for nonprofits to disassociate themselves from the Sackler name without liability, and over the past decade New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs has moved away from approving “in perpetuity” naming rights for the 34 organizations located on city-owned land under its jurisdiction, including the Brooklyn Museum and the American many institutions are grappling with when it comes to naming rights, asking whether it’s Museum of Natural History. According to a fair to apply today’s values to past behaviors. department spokesman, such arrangements “The Morgan is such a treasure,” a New York “limit long-term fundraising options for pubmuseum board member says about the Morlic assets and raise other public policy congan Library & Museum, which began as the cerns,” which can be understood to mean that private library of financier J.P. Morgan. “But what seems like a lot of money today may were the Morgans above reproach?” not seem that way forever.

Looking ahead, nonprofits are trying to In 1973, for example, Avery Fisher gave protect themselves in case a significant donor $10.5 million to the main concert hall at suddenly falls from grace. Gift acceptance polLincoln Center, where his name would be icies now routinely include morality clauses inscribed for the next four decades. Then, similar to those in celebrity endorsement conin 2014, Lincoln Center decided to resell tracts, and in the art world, where perceptions the naming rights to the hall as part of a are everything, such policies could lead to $500 million campaign. The Fisher family got uncomfortable conversations. “No one,” says $15 million back, and David Geffen stepped Thomas C. Danziger, an attorney who speforward with a $100 million gift, for which cializes in art transactions, “wants to go to the building was renamed David Geffen Hall the Jeffrey Epstein Wing.” in perpetuity. “I have everything I want,” GefMuseums “understand that it can be fen told the New York Times in 2015. “There’s off-putting if they say, ‘Please, can I have a nothing I’m looking to buy. And I’d rather see million dollars, but if there’s any reason we it do good while I’m here than give it away don’t want to be associated with you, we’d when I’m gone.” He got a deal. Across Lincoln like the right to unilaterally decide to take Center’s plaza, Koch paid the same amount off your name,’” says Diana Wierto have his name on David H. bicki, partner and global head of Koch Theater for just 50 years. art law at Withers Bergman LLP. A little ways to the south, at Adam Levine, director of the MoMA (where Geffen got his Toledo Museum of Art, says name on a new wing and galthat such conversations don’t leries following a $100 milhave to be tricky. “In my expelion gift in 2016), big donaIn November 2020 rience, those who want to tions don’t have a term. the Baltimore Museum support an institution do so Some of the museum’s deepof Art said it would name two public because of their love for its pocketed donors seem to take bathrooms after purpose,” he says. “And anysolace in the idea that their filmmaker John Waters thing that gets in the way of the naming rights are meant to after he donated institution’s ability to achieve last forever, no matter what its mission should be avoided they do. “We all are in perpeto the extent possible—even if tuity,” says a longtime trustee. works of art, including pieces by Andy Warhol it includes the reputational risk “If I found any different, I’d and Roy Lichtenstein. introduced by a donor.” be pissed off.”

Parading one’s wealth can be seen as bad taste… You may want to keep your head down.”

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Metropolitan Museum of Art named its Fifth Avenue plaza after Koch following a $65 million gift. In 2015 Koch gave $150 million to New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to build a 23-story facility bearing his name.

What would be the impact on such large gifts if donors start to wonder whether having their name on a gallery were an invitation to hammering them on social media? “It’s likely to have a chilling effect on philanthropy,” Ellis says. “If they fear rough justice, they may reconsider their philanthropic agendas.”

Museum trustees say naming rights aren’t likely to go away completely. In November 2020 the Baltimore Museum of Art said it would name two public bathrooms after filmmaker John Waters, in recognition of his gift of 372 works of art, including pieces

by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. But while Waters, who is known lovingly as the Pope of Trash, seems an unlikely candidate for cancellation, not every donor is so lucky.

In the summer of 2019, Warren Kanders stepped down from the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art after months of protests by activists, artists, and staffers against his company Safariland, which manufactures tear gas as well as military and police equipment. “That was such a terrible situation,” says a Whitney trustee who asked not to be named.

“And yet there’s a great exhibition that’s going to happen because of him.”

Indeed, when the museum was discussing the feasibility of Day’s End, an ambitious public art project by David Hammons set to open in May in the Hudson River near the Whitney, Kanders offered the seed money to “study it and see if we can do it,” the trustee says. “This is not who I want to have dinner with, but I love the idea that he said it.’’

A donor’s infractions need not be recent to attract attention. In Missouri the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art is reassessing its name after a local newspaper exposed the segregationist activities of its co-founder William Rockhill Nelson, who died in 1915. Now the museum’s board and leadership “are taking a careful and measured look at the museum’s history, including that of our founders,” says a spokeswoman.

Reputational risk is one of the points

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SUMMER PLANS DANCING IN THE STREET / DR AMA IN THE ART WORLD / YOUR PRINCE IN LONDON

Opening in theaters and on HBO Max June 11, In the Heights is a jubilant movie adaptation of the musical

by Lin-Manuel Miranda (shot in 2018 for T&C).

MAX VADUKUL (MIRANDA); COURTESY WARNER BROS. PICTURES (IN THE HEIGHTS)

Is That MUSIC We Hear?

One way to tell summer is back: a movie musical in theaters that will make you want to dance in the streets. BY ADAM RATHE

ew York City in the summertime isn’t for everyone. It’s easy to love an afternoon in Central Park, a ride on the Cyclone, or a splurge at a Mister Softee truck (swirled cone with a cherry dip, please!), but finding joy amid the sweltering temperatures and teeming crowds is no small feat.

To see a New York summer onscreen in In the Heights (opening in theaters and on HBO Max on June 11), however, you’d never know it wasn’t paradise. In director Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Tony-winning musical

by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes (which tells the story of Usnavi, a Washington Heights bodega owner, and the friends and family who surround him, and features a cast that includes Anthony Ramos,

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Daphne Rubin-Vega, Corey Hawkins, and Jimmy Smits), the season in Upper Manhattan is a riot of singing, dancing, young love, big dreams, and one very eventful blackout.

“Washington Heights really comes into its own in the summer,” Miranda says. “The

T HE T&C CONCESSION STA ND Watching In the Heights at home? Don’t skip the snacks. We’ll tune in with a tub of caramel and cheddar popcorn from Garrett (GARRETTPOPCORN .COM) and a pint-size bottle of Casa Dragones Blanco (RESERVEBAR.COM) to spike our soda.

streets are alive with neighbors, and there is music pouring out of every car and corner store. It seems like the most natural setting for a musical possible. In the Heights is a love letter to this community.”

It’s also timed perfectly for a world that is reopening. “When we shot the movie, I had no idea what a blackout was like,” Chu says.

“And then the pandemic happened, and our whole world experienced that powerlessness.

How do we get out of that? Community and family are always timely to me, and so are music, celebration, and joy.”

So while the warmest months of 2021 may not be exactly like summers past, one beloved tradition is certain: There’s a blockbuster coming, and it promises to be hot.

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O U T &A B O U T

SUMMER PLANS

Look Inside the BOX

f all the grand things New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art had planned for its 150th birthday last April, just one turned out to be pandemic-proof. In 2019 Met director Max Hollein had approached Sharon Coplan Hurowitz, an independent curator and publisher, with an idea: commission 12 contemporary artists to create original prints for a limited edition portfolio, of which only 60 would be made. (The Met 150 will be released in the fall.) The diverse group of seasoned veterans (Jasper Johns, Richard Serra, Ed Ruscha), contemporary stars (Julie Mehretu, Sarah Sze, Kerry James Marshall), and international talent from China (Xu Bing), Latvia (Vija Celmins), Mexico (Gabriel Orozco), Kenya (Wangechi Mutu), India (Ranjani Shettar), and Iran (Siah Armajani) was given carte blanche, the only parameters being the prints’ size. “They pushed the boundaries of the technique,” Hurowitz says of the artists, most of whom worked with the renowned workshop Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles. “No one treated this like a side project.” Leena Kim

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K E R RY JA M E S M A RS H A L L , UNTITLED (EXQUISITE CORPSE) Marshall used three different printing techniques for this work.

SA R A H SZE, PA PILLON Sze worked around the project’s size limits (15 X 15 inches) by turning her print into a gatefold.

XU B IN G, ART FOR THE PEOPLE Each character is paired with a QR code that links to the Met’s website.

S I A H A R M A JA N I , HOUSE ABOVE BRIDGE The Iranian-born artist, whose acclaimed works often incorporated bridges, died in August 2020.

WA NGECHI MUTU, GIRL In 2019 the Kenyan-born Mutu became the first artist commissioned to fill the niches on the Met’s façade.

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ALL ARTWORKS © THE ARTISTS

E D RU SC H A , BOOM TOWN Four-color lithography and embossment were used to achieve the lush, tonal surface of this print.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates a landmark birthday, not with a gala but a once-in-a-lifetime portfolio.

O U T &A B O U T

SUMMER PLANS

A Dose of

HAPPILY Ever After

The king of the West End has a new princess—and you can see her live and in person. BY NAVEEN KUMAR f all the paused pastimes once again filling our dance cards, theater as we knew it hasn’t quite hit full swing.

Stateside, creative configurations abound. While Broadway has its sights set on fall openings, New York’s Public Theater will present Shakespeare in the Park this summer with a take on The Merry Wives of Windsor. In Massachusetts, the Berkshire Theatre Group’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest will bloom in June, and live performances are expected on stages nationwide.

Meanwhile, London’s West End plans to welcome theatergoers in increasing numbers much sooner.“Theater is a live, collective experience that you can’t find repeated in any other form,” says Andrew Lloyd Webber, the musical wellspring behind Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, among many others. “You feel the energy that you get from other people in the building.”

The composer will see his 23rd score, for a new adaptation of Cinderella by Oscar winner Emerald Fennell, among the first premieres to join a returning roster of West End productions when it debuts on June 25. The classic tale of a woman who escapes her domestic confines for a spectacular night out promises to meet the moment in more than one sense.

The new musical “is full of joy but makes quite a serious point as well,” Lloyd Webber says. While it follows the same beats as the classic Cinderella story, the new version arrives at “quite different outcomes.” Don’t

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worry, though—the fairy tale still ends happily. “Love in the end will triumph,” he says.

So will the art form to which he has devoted his life, if Lloyd Webber has his way.

A professed optimist, Lloyd Webber began his crusade for a robust return of indoor theater almost as soon as stages fell dark last

T H E WOR L D STAGE Outdoor theater will be in full swing this season.

East Hampton’s Guild Hall will host a weekend of Wendy Wasserstein in June (GUILDHALL.ORG), and in the fall the Oregon Shakespeare Festival will mount August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned (OSFASHLAND.ORG).

spring. “I didn’t think, Gosh, I’m going to be the one to step in and do it,” he says of his efforts, which have included testimony before Parliament, public participation in an early vaccine trial (“my antibodies from that thing are huge”), and mortgaging a home to raise money to renovate theaters. “For the profession that I absolutely love,” he says, “it was the least I could do.”

While Lloyd Webber has stepped into a leadership role befitting a knight, he’s also an eager craftsman. “I keep saying I’ve got to get back to my day job,” he says. If advance bookings are any indication, Cinderella could be his ticket back to the ball. “I think there will be a moment of euphoria,” he says of patrons’ first night back. “Then I think things will settle down and be pretty much back to normal.”

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La Prairie collaborated with Chinese artist Carla Chan to capture the majesty of the Swiss Alps, which inspired the Pure Gold Collection. She created a time-based video installation immersing guests in the beauty of the golden hour, that was revealed at Frieze New York, as part of the brand’s first participation to the art fair.

The Monte Rosa Hut in the Swiss Alps, where Carla stayed during her artist residency with La Prairie

O U T &A B O U T CryptoPunks, an NFT by Larva Labs, was auctioned by Christie’s as part of its 21st Century Evening Sale on May 11.

SUMMER PLANS

Those artists will still want their work to live in the real world. John Gerrard, for example, created an NFT of his famous Western Flag simulation as well as a video sequence and a still to go with it. “Even I would prefer to have a painting over a JPEG,” says Rachel Rossin, a multimedia artist who was the New Museum’s first virtual reality fellow. “But what makes NFTs interesting is that you can put them wherever you like: on a large screen or a small one, you can have a dedicated computer for your virtual reality pieces, you can build a screen wall for it. Experiment—doing what brings you delight is the point of collecting anything.”

NFTs can be viewed on any screen, from a computer to a TV— or, in the near future, maybe even your refrigerator—but serious collectors won’t want to behold their latest acquisitions as they reach for the milk. “We are seeing more and more screens enter people’s homes, and we probably aren’t far away from seeing rooms with a screen as a wall,” says Joe Saavedra, founder and CEO of Infinite Objects, which prints and frames NFTs, including Beeple’s pieces, in specially crafted displays. “Digital art can be used in those spaces, but we wanted to elevate it in a permanent way, as NFTs may be the art world’s hot new offering, but displaying these you might an oil painting or other digital trophies comes with modern complications. piece of art.”

BY OLIVIA HOSKEN Frames are on the way, whether s Beeple basked in the aftermath of content can mature with technology. Unlike as fantastical one-off creations like Maarten the $69.3 million auction of Every- a physical work of art, it isn’t confined to one Baas’s clocks or in minimalist settings, like days: The First 5000 Days at Christie’s, form, so it can be displayed differently decades David Hockney’s iPad drawings. Will they he had more on his mind than his newfound from now,” says Meghan Doyle, a Christie’s replace trusty paint and canvas? No, but we riches: He needed a frame. contemporary art specialist. For example, wouldn’t be surprised if art collectors’ walls After all, as the new frontier of NFTs— Beeple’s Everydays is purely digital, which start sporting a bespoke digital frame or two. non-fungible tokens, which are artworks or means its owner, crypto-investor Vignesh For now, watch this space. collectibles that are certified on a blockchain, Sundaresan, can never print it to hang above a permanent digital ledger—opens up, col- his mantel (unless of course that mantel is in lectors are going to need a place to put them, his virtual mansion). and an ornate gilt rectangle simply won’t cut But as more artists enter the digital cloud NFT S I R L it. Mike Winkelmann (Beeple’s real name) and the market stabilizes, this will change.

Beeple is crafting his own frames, but other ideas won’t reveal what this new hardware might “It’s like the beginning of Amazon, cryptoare already gracing gallery walls. Infinite Objects currency, or even photography,” says gallerist look like, but he has hinted that it will be prints NFTs on special displays, the Looking Dominique Lévy. “I think [the NFT market] is unlike any frame we’ve seen before.

Glass Portrait projects holographic art, and Today most NFTs are viewed online, as going to cleanse itself of the madness quickly Mono X7 is a screen attached to a minicomputer not all artists give permission for them to and evolve into something more meaningful. so artworks can be swapped on a whim. be printed into physical art. “This way the It has a fabulous creative energy.”

A

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GETTY IMAGES/EYEEM (FRAME); CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2021 (CRYPTOPUNKS)

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O U T &A B O U T Was there a choice you made, whether in your personal life or your career, that has greatly affected who you are today?

BEN VEREEN: You know, I didn’t really prepare for this. I didn’t go, “Well, you know what, I want to be a star. I want to be on Broadway, I want to be in movies.” That wasn’t my goal. I’m from Brooklyn. As a matter of fact, when I was a kid, I thought you needed a passport to get to Brooklyn, New York. I really did, because I never left New York, I never left Brooklyn. So when this whole idea came to me of show business, it wasn’t something that I decided to do. I tell people a spirit chose me to do it and I’ve been blessed.

In your career you’ve received many awards and accolades. Is there anything that’s more substantial to you than an award?

BV: Life. Life. Awards are beautiful accolades.

Look, I was in a show called Jesus Christ Superstar playing the role of Judas with Jeff Fenholt and Yvonne Elliman, and the stage manager came backstage, knocked on my door, and he said, “Mr. Vereen, you have an envelope.”

And I said, “Give it here.” And he said, “No, you have an envelope.” I said, “Yeah, man, give me the damn envelope.” So I snatched it and I started reading it. It said that I had been nominated for a Tony. I turned to the doorman, and I said, “Who’s Tony?” I had no idea who Tony was, because that’s not the reason I came this way.

Tony-winning actor Ben Vereen, photographed in New York City, has spent more than 50 years performing on stage and screen.

He’s Got MAGIC to Do The only thing longer and more storied than Ben Vereen’s career is his memory. BY DANIELLE HARLING PHOTOGRAPH BY JAI LENNARD

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or decades award-winning actor Ben Vereen—who originated roles on Broadway in Jesus Christ Superstar and Pippin and was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of “Chicken” George Moore in 1977’s landmark television adaptation of Roots—has proven to be a trifecta of talent, mastering film, television, and the stage. Not one to let his accolades outshine his purpose, Vereen talks here of his humble beginnings and why Black stories need to be told.

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Did you have any idea that Roots would have such an impact?

BV: You see, my Jewish brothers and sisters had Hitler, who was a madman, who filmed everything. They have documents. But my people don’t have documents. We don’t have film. We have spoken word, so this is an opportunity for us to document the slavery story. So that’s why I did it. We had no idea it was going to take off the way it did.

Do you ever think there should be a point where Black trauma is censored?

BV: No. We haven’t told all our story yet. You know, we have a rich heritage. So the debate on whether or not we should continue to tell our story, I say yes, because our story has not been truly told yet.

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Gucci Movie SUMMER

You, this bag, a floral headscarf, and Clooney— perfetto. Why we’re gaga, again, for the sensual pleasures of classic Italian glamour.

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BY ALESSANDRA CODINHA PHOTOGRAPH BY ALLIE HOLLOWAY

arlier this year the internet collectively erupted in excitement over a photograph of Adam Driver and Lady Gaga. This was not just any picture: The pair were costumed to the hilt as mid’90s Maurizio Gucci and Patrizia Reggiani for Ridley Scott’s forthcoming film House of Gucci. As the behind-the-scenes snaps poured out, it became clear that there was far more at play than the hormonal response elicited by charismatic celebrities, or the promise of a dishy true crime flick.

There was fashion: several decades’ worth of statement-making suits, jewelry, and sumptuous textiles gathered in eye-popping ensembles glimpsed through a paparazzo’s long-range lens (and sometimes Gaga’s Instagram account).

You didn’t have to spend much time sifting through the swooning commentary to see that after all the hideous trials of 2020, and this year’s strenuous strides toward recovery, we are all in desperate need of some big-time, grown-up glamour, and for that there’s really only one place to look.

It was Italy that gave rise to the kaleidoscopic color wheels of Emilio Pucci and the zigzag zealotry of Missoni, the supermodel armor of Gianni and Donatella Versace, the va-va-voom decadence of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, the streamlined soigné of Giorgio Armani, the feathered flounce of Valentino, and the cool confidence of Prada. Nowhere else really comes close, even now. Perhaps especially now, after a year of elastic waistbands and Zoom fits.

“Italian style is joyous, happy,” says Margherita Missoni. “It’s quite outspoken, not shy.

To me it is bold: solid colors and gold.” To this day, she and her husband can identify

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STYLED BY REBECCA BARTOSHESKY AT HELLO ARTISTS

Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele designed this handbag, seen here exclusively, for the label’s 100th anniversary.

European nationalities just based on ward- wish fulfillment: We want to go there, subito. from the rest of the pack post-quarantine, take “It’s about the package,” says Bianca Arriva- heart (and a floral headscarf). Arrivabene, robe. Italians are easy. “The style is always quite bene, the Venice doyenne and deputy chair who is planning to vacation this summer luxurious, quite dressed.”

Italians have been known for their sarto- of Christie’s Italy. “In Italy you get the blue in Greece with a small group of friends, rial skills since well before the author Bal- skies, the beautiful beaches, the beautiful art, is packing new red Prada sandals and her dassare Castiglione coined the term sprez- the Duomo di Firenze, the Piazza San Marco, gold Madina Visconti necklaces to dress up zatura in 1528, though what they called it the piazza in Naples, la Costiera Amalfitana, her shorts and bikinis. She says she hopes for a more sustainable approach going foruntil then is anybody’s guess. Later, Guccio Palermo… These places touch all your senses ward—“to fashion, to writing emails, to drivat the same time.”

Gucci was among the craftsmen who set up ing our cars,” to buying things that are bello Italians reacted less to the Hollywood take their businesses in the aftermath of World War I and helped Italy rebuild its economy on the ill-fated Guccis, a lurid tabloid tale still e ben fatto: beautiful and well made.

More immediately, Arrivabene anticipates fresh in the minds of many, than to the bravado following the devastation of World War II thanks to such signature items as the Bam- of the period, a boom time for an industry a feeling Venetians know well: euphoria. “I boo bag, which went straight from the gilded that is celebrated as a source of national pride. think that’s what’s going to happen to all of Florentine salas of the 1950s into the arms, “There still was a freedom then for design- us. We’re going to be dancing and having fun ers to create what came from their hearts, not and hugging each other like mad,” she says. and era, of the dolce vita jetset.

One thing you can count on: The Italians By the 1970s, when Gucci, the founder’s obliged to respond to what the market wanted,” grandson, and Reggiani met and married, the Arrivabene says. “Less Excel sheets and market will be dressed for the occasion. “I rarely wear high heels,” Missoni tells T&C, “and I just world’s attention had shifted to Milan, where research, more instinct and creativity.”

As for those of us looking to take a page bought a pair of lime-green pumps, because a ready-to-wear revolution was underway, led by the likes of Armani (founded in 1975) and from the Italians and appear a little different I cannot wait to go out.”

Versace (1978), which were designing clothes for café society to see and, more important, to be seen in. The ’80s and ’90s only pumped up the volume, fortissimo.

It’s all about sprezzatura, “Italians have a real pride for beauty and style,” says J.J. Martin, the California-born, Milan-based designer behind La DoubleJ. That’s true of their country’s outlook in general, she says; Italians take their sensual pleasures seriously, whether it’s what they put on their bodies or on their dining tables.

“I grew up skiing Mammoth Mountain. It was not chic at all. My family would have their tuna fish sandwiches squished in their fanny packs for lunch,” Channel not Lady Gaga but she says. The Guccis après-ski in St. the pioneer of the power Moritz it was not. pearl, Catherine de’ Medici.

word is effortless. A simple summer dress completes a molto Italiano look.

SPLASH NEWS (GAGA)

and enchants everyone.” national reception to the candid images of Gaga and Driver on set—in close-cut cashmere, with ’70s stripes, checks, and florals, and heaps of gold and pearls, no less—is rooted in a kind of arrested

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Polonius of QUEENS

Fran Fine had a philosophy: To thine own self—and Moschino—be true.

It may be time to live by The Nanny’s rules.

BY ROXANNE ADAMIYATT

hen I was younger, sick days home from school meant one thing and one thing only: I got to spend the day with my caretaker. Not my mother or my family’s housekeeper, but my nanny—the Nanny, the irrepressible sitcom character Fran Fine, who was memorably brought to life by the actress Fran Drescher for six seasons in the ’90s. I don’t remember the show’s major plot points, but the clothes? I remember the clothes, a kaleidoscope of animal prints, upbeat colors, and more joie de vivre in a single miniskirt than I thought possible. I wasn’t the only one whose mind was blown— it was the costume design by Brenda Cooper that earned The Nanny its only Emmy, and today the show remains a social media darling.

Now, 22 years after it went off the air, The Nanny is finally available to stream (on HBO Max), and not a minute too soon. After a year of sweatpants with zero joie de vivre, Fran is a Glade Plug-In of sartorial effervescence.

“She kind of defibrillated us into seeing sitcom characters as truly expressive and quirky dressers,” says Jill Kargman, the creator of the TV series Odd Mom Out. “It’s especially vital now to be jolted back into her world of technicolor fabulosity.” Drescher, who is as well known for her character as she is for her charity, Cancer Schmancer, put it like this to T&C: “Today more than ever we need to bust out of style dictums and follow our own truth. Do what makes your heart sing!”

In her debut on CBS in 1993, Miss Fine stumbles into the home of a recently widowed British Broadway producer—Mistah Sheffield—and, like an outer borough Mary Poppins, charms his household. Hijinks ensue. What caught my eye was that Fran and her extended family (Hi, Grandma Yetta) dressed like no one else on television. It was

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MOSCHINO

CHRISTOPHER JOHN ROGERS

CAROLINA HERRERA

DIOR

the grungy era of Jerry Seinfeld and Roseanne Barr, and the flashy girl from Flushing strolled on in head-to-toe designer: Todd Oldham, Isaac Mizrahi, and Christian Lacroix.

“She was decked out in Moschino and Bob Mackie at a time when everyone wanted to look like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy,” says Chelsea Fairless, co-curator of the popular Instagram account @EveryOutfitOnSATC. For Cooper (whose new book, The Silhouette Solution, is out in December), the show’s sweet spot was a high-low mix: “the perfect opportunity to use fashion, wit, and humor to elevate the comedy in a sexy but appropriate way.”

Designers, of course, immediately got the character. “No matter what she wore,” Mizrahi says, “you never noticed the clothes more than you noticed her.” By making a statement in a world of snoozy neutrals, Fran Fine was also pushing cultural boundaries in subtler ways. “Most shows were and are skewed to the broader American public and a general WASP uniform,” Kargman says. “Even if Fran reinforced a couple of stereotypes about being loud and flashy, I appreciated the chutzpah she injected into TV.” With her big hair and trademark laugh, Fran always understood the assignment, and she showed me that a houndstooth print mini and matching tweed jacket was, if not always the right choice, then at least worth trotting out every now and then.

In the tony enclave where I was raised, prep was the perpetual MO. Yet each episode of The Nanny was an unapologetically perky fashion seminar brimming with frisky frocks and headbands (remember the piano dress?), racetrack prints, and miles and miles of sequins.

Perhaps that’s Fran’s most enduring style lesson: the conviction of individual taste. The Polonius of Queens remained true to herself, a smidge gaudy but defiant in her sequined Stephen Sprouse miniskirt suit. Now the real challenge is finding one just like it.

CBS/GETTY IMAGES (DRESCHER)

Designers will always love a lady in red when everyone else is wearing tan. Watch out, CC!

PRESENTED BY STEARNS & FOSTER

HOW TO CHOOSE THE PERFECT MATTRESS You spend one-third of your life in bed, why not make it wonderful?

MAKE IT PERSONAL

Scale the size to your space and match the firmness to your sleep style. Map out your bedroom to determine whether a king or a queen would be the best fit. If you sleep with a partner (or pets!), it may be worth sizing up. Find the right feel—Firm, Plush, or Ultra Plush—based on your usual sleep position.

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Joy Cho, founder of celebrated lifestyle brand Oh Joy!, shares how to make the most of your bedroom.

No bedroom is complete without…

Cozy bedding, the perfect set of pj’s, and mood lighting.

THINK LONG TERM

A high-quality mattress should last up to 10 years, so invest in comfort, durability, and support.

Research how it’s made— the materials used for the interior and the exterior can have a major impact on comfort and durability over time.

What helps you sleep better?

I love tweaking the design of my space to foster sleep and comfort.

Also, a calming spritz of rose water on my face!

What are some easy ways to make a bedroom more inviting?

Start with a neutral base, then add color and build depth with patterned accessories.

What’s a quick way to refresh a bedroom?

A comforter or sheets in a fun color can make your bed look and feel like new! Try modern embroidery, watercolor washes, or contrast detailing– my current design obsessions.

TRUST THE LEGACY

A LEGACY OF DESIGN IN EVERY STITCH

At Stearns & Foster, we believe that exceptional design lives in the details. This is why we have spent every day of our 175-year legacy committed to refining the details that make Stearns & Foster distinct.

From velvet trim to hand-tufted top layers, our mattresses are meticulously crafted to look as good as they feel. Use our tips to help you choose the perfect mattress to complete your bedroom sanctuary.

This year, Stearns & Foster and Town & Country share an extraordinary milestone, celebrating 175 years as landmark American brands, built on trust, authenticity, and enduring ingenuity.

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Seek out a brand with a proven track record.

Stearns & Foster mattresses are crafted by hand, not mass-produced.

So much care is put into them that each mattress is hand-signed by the Master Craftsman who built it.

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We’re spending more time in our bedrooms than ever before—from working to reading to bingeing the latest series. Adding an adjustable base to your mattress can optimize comfort, making your bed a life hub by day and a sleep sanctuary by night.

© Oscar Heyman & Brothers, Inc, 2021

Paraiba Tourmaline Necklace Earrings & 10.16ct Ring

T I C KTO C K N I P -T U C K / AT H E N I A N S N A K E C H A R M I N G / T H E N E W P OW E R A M U L E T S The crown jewel of Rolex service centers is in Lititz, PA, also home to the Technicum, an elite school training the next generation of American watchmakers.

41MM OYSTERSTEEL ($8,100), ROLEX.COM; ROLEX CELLINI MOONPHASE 39MM EVEROSE ($26,750), ROLEX.COM

The Watch It’s tucked away in the Switzerland of the Susquehanna Valley.

Because no one has to know about your timepiece’s little “timeout.” olex owners rarely give watch repair a second thought. We imagine that tuneups, when needed, happen somewhere that resembles a combination of the tree where the Keebler elves bake cookies and the munitions lab where Q cooks up new gadgets for 007. Over the years I had heard whispers of a “watch spa,” the horological equivalent of knowing about the off-the-menu burger at Raoul’s. But it was the stuff of myth, like El Dorado.

Then, on a recent gray day, I found myself driving through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the rolling farmland looks ripped from Andrew Wyeth. As I turned into Lititz, which bills itself as “America’s Coolest Small Town,” an unmarked 40,000-square-foot facility came into view. It had the vibe of a Silicon Valley tech campus, except it was composed of two postmodern stone barns and a grain silo, the three joined by the late “New York Five” architectural great Michael Graves. The only hint that there might be a king’s ransom worth of watches inside was my GPS reading: “Rolex Watch USA.”

A L L I E H O L L O W AY, S T Y L E D BY R E B E C C A B A R T O S H E S K Y AT H E L L O A R T I S T S

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I had arrived at a slice of Switzerland in the Susquehanna River Valley, the fabled watch hospital where Rolexes from all around the country come to be rehabilitated and readied for the next generation. On any given day scores of them are getting worked over, stretched, prodded, and tweaked, with more care than you’d find in a boot camp at Canyon Ranch (though here the average stay is less than three weeks), because some of the timepieces need a timeout.

“We once received a watch after a wife was so angry with her husband that she dropped his Rolex into the garbage disposal,” one of the managers of the facility told me during a rare tour extended exclusively to T&C. When the watch arrived here, the incoming order form read “Customer says it slipped off her wrist and fell under the car while backing up.”

Only genuine, non-altered Rolexes can score entry into one of the elite service centers, which can be found all over the country—but this spot is Valhalla. Ten years into the life of a Rolex it may start to show hints that it needs a refresh, losing a second or two every day. Sometimes customers wait until their watch literally stops; others send theirs for more regular servicing the way people change the oil in their cars.

The last time I had sent my Rolex in for service was in the 1990s, and as I made the rounds meeting various technicians, people would ask to see my late-’60s Submariner and then react as if I were handing them a late-’80s Chet Baker off my wrist. Everyone was too polite to say of this faded icon, “Jeez, you really ought to get that looked at.” The most anyone would say is, “Do you still wear that in the ocean?”

There are roughly 125 people who revitalize watches here; specialized technicians, who usually spend three months in a training program here followed by nine months of working closely with a supervisor, and watchmakers, who receive about two years of training, including, for many, time at Rolex HQ in Switzerland. (In 2001 Rolex opened a Technicum at the Lititz site to train the next generation of watchmakers.) But regardless of who is doing it, the work requires both a high level of dexterity and a special temperament. The OCD side of my personality was envious of a professional life in which every day is spent intently focused on a canvas that is no larger than a postage stamp.

Some of the most detailed and delicate work takes place at the stations where the movement is taken apart and refurbished.

In a nutshell, the movement is really the 48

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vital organ of a watch. The rotors, levers, and jewels are so tiny that the techs here use 25X magnifying loupes and work with tweezers. When a watch comes in for service, the main spring (the heart of a watch) is always replaced. If any of the gears have dull teeth, they’re replaced too. After key parts have been replaced, the movement is cleaned, lubricated, and reassembled. A watchmaker manning the quality control station will look over and test the movement, like a teacher with a red pencil; he may send it back if it doesn’t pass muster.

Every so often a celebrity watch passes through Lititz, and a director told me management sometimes tries to match the piece

HANDLE WITH CARE A five-step guide to a watch face-lift. Don’t try this at home.

STEP 1: The movement, the most vital organ, is de-cased. The gears, jewels, levers, and spring are all inspected.

STEP 2: Key parts are lubricated and replaced, and the dial is polished to its original luster.

STEP 3: Over 24 hours, the watch is road-tested in conditions simulating those on a wearer’s wrist.

STEP 4: A machine like Tony Stark’s rice cooker tests for waterproofness and pressure seal.

Feel free to go diving afterward.

STEP 5: After two weeks of tuneups, case and bracelet are reunited, et voilà—a new look!

And no recovery time, either.

to the technician who will appreciate it the most, so that a golfer might work on Arnold Palmer’s watch, a downhill skier on Lindsey Vonn’s, or a Billy Joel fan on the singer’s twotone Rolex Datejust. I couldn’t help picturing a watchmaker humming “Uptown Girl.”

The operating theater at this sanatorium is the case department. It is here that the crowns, bracelets, and casings are refurbished, in a sort of glorified body shop, one that is immaculate enough that you could eat sushi off the counters. The day I visited, a particularly banged-up Yacht Master was undergoing some plastic surgery. To remedy the years of misadventures at sea, a tech in a green lab coat and safety goggles was working the case against a felt-covered wheel covered with cutting paste. As the case was rolled from side to side, the nicks were gradually ground away.

Once the scars are gone, it’s on to a different wheel covered with soft microfiber sheets that bring the dial back to its original luster. And on to a third wheel for a final polish. But not every customer wants his dial restored. When a mountaineer’s Explorer came in for repair, a director realized that the watch belonged to a well-known alpinist who had summited Mount Everest. So he called the climber to ask whether he might want to leave the casing as is—after all, it had been a witness to history.

“I like the scarring on my casing, too,” I yell over the din of the sanding machines. Again my claim is met with a look that says, “You really need to take better care of that thing.”

With refinishing completed, the watch heads to a sort of decompression chamber fitted with high-tech gizmos that test how it will operate underwater and under pressure.

The day I was there a Sea Dweller, a watch that is waterproof to a depth of 4,000 feet, was put through the ringer inside a machine that looks as if it could be Tony Stark’s rice cooker. Once cleared, the watch receives another round of quality control, and then it’s reunited with its bracelet and packaged up for its return to its owner.

As I get back in the car to head home, I feel a bit guilty that I’ve brought my watch to see all the different treatments available, yet I did not leave him for some pampering. How many other relationships in my life have run without a hitch for more than 20 years? The look I get from this inanimate object is reminiscent of the one I get from our 11-year-old every time one of her friends gets a puppy.

“Soon,” I find myself whispering to no one in particular as I turn onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. “I promise.”

COURTESY ROLEX (5)

BRIGHT THINGS

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The POWER Is inYou And also maybe on you.

Cuffs have a lot to say— let them speak.

BY JILL NEWMAN

For the NAACP Image Awards in March, actress Tracee Ellis Ross wore an Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co. snake necklace and Bone cuffs.

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BRIGHT THINGS n the Marvel superhero flick Black Panther, the kingdom of Wakanda’s fiercest warriors are all women. The group, known as the Dora Milaje, are characterized by their red and gold outfits, for which veteran costume designer Ruth E. Carter took inspiration from the Turkana and Maasai cultures of Kenya.

Reinforcing their battle gear were stacked neck rings and matching cuffs by designer Douriean Fletcher that call to mind the Ndebele women of South Africa. Then there is Wonder Woman, a master at harnessing the potential of cuffs—hers repel bullets, after all. In the latest installment of her franchise, Wonder Woman 1984, Gal Gadot doesn’t just sport cuffs for protection on the job, she also incorporates the power piece into her offduty look, in the form of—what else?—Elsa Peretti’s Bone cuff.

It’s hardly a coincidence, then, that as we prepare for the transition back to IRL socializing, cuffs are enjoying a renaissance. See: the spring/ summer runways of Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Chloé. Jewelers too are heralding the comeback with stylish new designs, some decorated with colorful gems, others studded with sleek black diamonds.

Call them armor for stepping out into the world again, or symbolic expressions of liberation (at last), or maybe it’s just a simple desire to feel sexy and invincible. Or, better yet, all of the above. “Cuffs are an unapologetic style statement,” says Nico Landrigan, president of Verdura. “I see them as a wink and nod to what has come before. They’re the iconography of female power.”

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans brandished cuffs as status markers and talismans of protection. Centuries later, Coco Chanel showed her inimitable independent streak by taking apart the jewels she received from her lovers, among them Russia’s Grand Duke Dmitri, and asking her

I

friend Fulco di Verdura to create something new. So was born Verdura’s iconic Maltese cross cuffs, which Chanel wore everywhere, from beach to black tie, always as a pair and most certainly as constant reminders of her self-determination. Even her equally singular contemporaries, like Nancy Cunard, Millicent Rogers, and Helena Rubinstein, rarely left their wrists bare.

Cuffs were also Buccellati’s best-sellers, according to patriarch Andrea Buccellati, who continues to create new renditions of the house signature. “When I draw cuff bracelets, I have the possibility to express all the fundamental concepts of the maison’s workmanship,” he says. “The surfaces are wide, so I can combine openwork and tulle techniques with the engraving, and play with colored stones.”

Not surprisingly, the last major cuff revival took place in the 1970s, another time defined by liberation, when they became inextricably linked to the feminist movement. Van Cleef & Arpels, for example, created a series of handwrought cuffs in gold that were favored

by Jackie Onassis. But it was Elsa Peretti who really captured the essence of the era with the sensuous, sculptural Bone cuff that she designed for Tiffany & Co. It embodied the ’70s spirit with a minimalist form that molded to the curves of the wrist. For the collection’s 50th anniversary last year, Tiffany released new models, including sterling silver, gold, and copper iterations studded with stones of turquoise, jade, and obsidian. “The Bone cuff is indicative of such a strong sense of style,” says celebrity stylist Karla Welch, who accessorized Tracee Ellis Ross with a gold pair for the NAACP Image Awards in March.

In other words, this summer the message is clear: Cuffs will be key emblems of postpandemic freedom, especially when worn as a set.

ERIK MELVIN (ELLIS ROSS)

Cuffs are an unapologetic style statement.

They’re the iconography of female power.”

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RENEWAL NOTICE Jewelry’s premier serpentine mascot undergoes a high fashion transformation.

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Long before Bulgari made it a house signature in the 1940s, the serpent had been an alluring and seductive symbol for centuries. The figure can be traced back to the Hellenistic period; it loomed especially large in ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Then there was Elizabeth Taylor, who gave the motif’s appeal a jolt when she wore a coiled gold snake armband in 1963’s Cleopatra. Its magnetism hasn’t waned since.

Bulgari has continually revisited the theme in glamorous jewels, watches, and accessories.

Recently, the maison tapped Mary Katrantzou to design a capsule collection of handbags (and a fragrance) featuring the iconic snake, which the Greek fashion designer did with her signature use of exuberant color and pattern.

“The Serpenti holds powerful meaning to me personally as a symbol of rebirth and transformation, and that is so relevant at this moment,” says Katrantzou, whose unforgettable 2019 couture show at the Temple of Poseidon in Athens featured archival high jewelry pieces on loan from Bulgari. “More than ever, luxury pieces will need to tell a story and connect with us in a way that feels personal.”

The centerpiece of the new collection is an oversize snake head minaudière that was inspired by a 1968 harlequin timepiece—a master class in Bulgari craftsmanship, each individual scale hand-painted in enamel and the clasp a forked tongue. The leather handbags feature a fully articulated snake top handle that is as tactile as a coiled Serpenti necklace, while another style is embellished with a mosaic of embroidered butterflies. Instilling even more meaning in the project: A portion of bag sales will go to the Naked Heart Foundation.

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Come July, this might be you, approaching Piazza San Marco across the Venice Lagoon.

All the amazing, beautiful, longed-for places we think we can see this summer.

SIMON WATSON

BY KLARA GLOWCZEWSKA

ou’ve waited long enough. It’s reward time. Here are four crème-de-la-crème journeys—in the Caribbean, Greece, Italy, and the USA—planned out day by day. We’ve consulted top trip designers. We’ve considered every detail. Book them as is or customize them as you desire. (And, because things change like the wind, get travel insurance.) Dare we say it: Bon voyage.

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T & C U LT I M AT E I T I N E R A R I E S

You Can Definitely GO NOW…

On a sailing trip around 15 Caribbean islands. (You may need to adjust ports as protocols change—no big deal.)

DAYS 7– 8 P R ACTI C E YOU R FRENCH WHERE St. Bart’s. CRUISE TIME 2.5 hours. WHY Need you ask? The fun part of arriving at St. Bart’s by yacht is that you’re immediately smack in the middle of the action.

HOW You’ll wake up in the port of Gustavia and have two full days. When you’re not trying to guess which yacht is whose, you can beach-, restaurant-, and spahop; you can also shop till you drop. And, yes, there’s all that other stuff: hiking, diving, and water sports, including deep sea fishing and a tour in a little yellow submarine. Et voilà.

rivate yacht charters spell travel freedom. You can use them to explore many islands or to have maximum time on the water (helpful if borders close). You can be as active (mountain biking) or laid-back (onboard spa treatments) as you like. You can leave an anchorage earlier than planned, or linger. So consider this Leeward Islands itinerary one excellent example of what is possible.

P

DAYS 1 – 2 HAVE SOME HISTORY WITH YOUR HEDONISM WHERE Antigua. WHY The largest of the English-speaking Leewards has plenty of secluded anchorages and beaches, and a major historic site: Nelson’s Dockyard, the British Royal Navy’s 18th-century Caribbean base and now home to Antigua’s sailing and yachting events. HOW A private car will whisk you from the airport to the yacht, where the crew awaits.

Laze aboard, visit the dockyard, or take a tender to swim and snorkel.

HOW TO BOOK IT

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Cocktails and dinner are onboard, and the yacht relocates in the morning to either Green Island (private, lots of reef fish) or Five Island Harbor and its beautiful coves.

DAY 3 WA L K W I T H H A M I LTON WHERE Nevis (daytrip). CRUISE TIME 4.5 hours. WHY It’s small and scenic (dominated by the Nevis Peak volcano) and untouched by mass tourism. It’s also the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton. HOW Your captain will choose the best location for swimming and water sports (there’s diving at Monkey Shoal), as well as for rum punches and live reggae.

There’s a beautiful botanical garden, and the golf course designed

by Robert Trent Jones II at the Four Seasons is tops in the Caribbean; tee times can be reserved.

DAYS 4 – 5 VA N Q U I SH A VOLCA NO WHERE St. Kitts (which is part of the same country as Nevis). CRUISE TIME 1 hour. WHY It’s one of the most

unspoiled, tranquil, and beautiful islands in the Caribbean, much of it national parks with rainforests and mountain ranges. HOW After picking an anchorage, you can go hard (hiking the Liamuiga volcano) or easy (exploring on a 4X4—flowers, birds, and waterfalls—an onboard fitness class, or a tour of the colorful town of Basseterre).

DAY 6 FLE X YOU R PA D I CR E D S WHERE Saba (daytrip). CRUISE TIME 3.5 hours. WHY It’s just 5 square miles, most of it occupied by the dormant volcano Mount Scenery, and a wonderland both above water and below. HOW After anchoring, experienced divers have Saba National Marine Park to play in: coral formations, underwater mountains, sharks, turtles, dolphins. Non-divers can hike, snorkel, or play with the water toys—wakeboards, water skis, kayaks, Seabobs—you name it. (Inflatable slide, anyone?)

DAYS 9 –1 0 BECOME A BEACH BUM WHERE Anguilla. CRUISE TIME 2 hours. WHY We have the flat little island’s coral base to thank for its superb beaches: blinding white sand, turquoise water—the best. And hardly any people on them. HOW Picking beaches—there are 33—is serious business on Anguilla, as all have their special aura (and some have restaurants). Your captain will go over the charts with you to assist in the wrenching choices.

DAYS 1 1– 1 4 C H A N N E L YO U R I N N E R B U C CA N E E R WHERE The British Virgin Islands.

CRUISE TIME 7.5 hours. WHY Its multitude of green isles, some uninhabited, is a yachting paradise.

HOW You’ll clear into the BVI in Tortola (from which, on day 15, you’ll also depart for home) and have four days to explore. In your sights: Peter Island, Cooper Island, Virgin Gorda, Great Camanoe, Little Camanoe, Guano Island, Jost Van Dyke, and Norman Island— which inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Castaway picnics will be provided, and the mothership—here’s the beauty— is always standing close by.

Private yachting itineraries are of course highly personalized. You can book exactly this one, developed with yachting specialist Mary Crowley, or work with her to customize it (SAIL@OCEANVOYAGES.COM). Go to TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM/SUMMERTRAVEL2021 for details, photos, and extras.

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ANDERS OVERGAARD

“My, she was yar!”

Katharine Hepburn said of a yacht in The Philadelphia Story. Feeling it here off Antigua.

Check in and ...

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• Private beach access

• Complimentary kids club

• Complimentary use of beach chairs and umbrellas

• Coastal Kids food and beverage program (kids 3 and under eat free)* • Complimentary use of non-motorized water sports • Complimentary Wi-Fi across the resort • Complimentary morning coffee and tea *Kids 4-12 at $45++/day

• Unlimited tennis court time (based on availability) • Unlimited access to fitness center • Complimentary bicycle rental

SOUTH OCEAN BLVD MANALAPAN FL RESERVATIONS

| EAUPALMBEACH COM

T & C U LT I M AT E I T I N E R A R I E S

You Can GO NOW, BUT…

On an odyssey in Greece so divine it would have made Odysseus jealous.

(Just watch those border openings—nothing is carved in stone.) hether you’re planning a first trip to Greece or a post-pandemic return splurge, the stops, excursions, and pampering on this itinerary are the tops (and crowd-free, for now).

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DAYS 1 – 2 FE E L O H S O C I V I LZE D WHERE Athens. WHY Where to begin? Cradle of Western civilization, birthplace of democracy, and a vibrant modern city, with three major new (or reborn) art institutions. HOW Check into the Four Seasons Astir Palace, if you prefer out of town, or the Grande Bretagne— in central Syntagma Square, with views of the Acropolis from both your suite and the rooftop restaurant—and your afternoon is at leisure (with suggestions). The next day is a grand guided tour of both the city’s ancient and contemporary treasures. Among them: the Acropolis and its spectacular museum; the Columns of Olympian Zeus (remnants of a colossal temple begun in the 6th century BC); the Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art (showcasing the $3 billion collection of shipping tycoon Basil Goulandris and his wife Elise); and the National Museum of Contemporary Art. DAYS 3 –5 HIT THE BEACH WHERE Mykonos. WHY It has the jewel of Mykonos town (aka Chora), the best beaches in Greece, and the best beach bars and restaurants on the planet.

HOW Fly in from Athens, check into the new, Aman-like Kalesma Mykonos, and relax—at one of those beaches, at the hotel’s pools, or on a drive-about. The next day you’re exploring the town with a local guide: the Archaeological Museum; the 15th-century Church of Panagia Paraportiani, among the most famous in Greece; the island’s famous windmills; and the maze of streets, with their rich traces of ancient Greeks and Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, and Ottomans, all of whom laid claim at various times to this most desirable little

HOW TO BOOK IT

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piece of Mediterranean real estate.

The finale? Sunset from a seaside spot in Chora’s Little Venice, with balconies overhanging blue water.

Recover the next day—especially if you partook of the island’s celebrated nightlife—at one of its exclusive beach clubs: Scorpios, Nammos, or Principote. Entry and chaise longues will be arranged.

Beach life doesn’t get more opulent.

DAYS 6 – 9 B E HYP NOT IZ ED BY T H E H O R I ZON WHERE Santorini. WHY It’s a geologic marvel: an ancient volcanic caldera, villages scattered on its dramatic black rim like sugarcubes, with some of the most mesmerizing infinity views on earth. HOW You’ll arrive the Greek way, by ferry from Mykonos. Your hotel is the classic Perivolas—white womblike structures and a pool perched at the edge of the caldera. Explore on your own (the center of Oia village is a quick walk) or just stay put and soak up those Aegean views, along with some Santorini wines. Day two is a guided off-the-grid walking tour—past rural mansions, backcountry villages, and a local winery, brewery, and taverna.

You’ll be on a five-hour private luxury catamaran tour the next day, sailing around the island—its Red and White beaches, the hot springs, the Venetian lighthouse. We understand that it can be wrenching to tear your eyes from these blue horizons (no wonder the ancient Greeks invented gods who came down from Olympus to earth), so we’ve built in one last day of pure Perivolas time.

to the Bronze Age ruins of Mycenae (think Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and the Trojan War), the theater of Epidaurus (the most perfect ancient Greek theater, both aesthetically and acoustically), and the town of Nafplion, Greece’s first capital. Nothing will make you feel more like 007 than a Wally One powerboat, your conveyance the next morning for a daytrip to the nearby islands of Spetses and Hydra, with stops at secluded beaches and tiny islets. The last Amanzoe day is for swanning about. Try the array of treatments

at the 30,000-square-foot spa, or lounge around among the hotel’s beach, pools, and pavilions.

DAY 14 FOLLOW IN PRINCE C H A R L E S ’S F O OTST E P S WHERE Athens again, after a scenic drive. WHY The renovated National Gallery, which has a 20,000-piece collection that portrays Greece’s history and culture through art.

HOW Your guide is a former member of the museum’s board of directors. Prince Charles and Camilla had the pleasure earlier this year.

It may be a legendary party place, but Mykonos also has an awful lot of churches— such as this rubyroofed beauty.

DAYS 1 0 – 1 3 PL AY LIKE BOND WHERE The Peloponnese. WHY The Amanzoe, near Porto Heli, is the best hotel in Greece, a destination in itself, and the excursions from it are tops. HOW Channel the winged god Hermes by flying from Santorini to the Amanzoe in a helicopter, then catch your breath amid its Greek temple–like facilities and olive tree–studded Aegean landscapes. The next day is on the go: a guided drive along the Saronic Gulf

This itinerary was developed with Christos Stergiou, an Athens-based travel specialist. Book it as is or work with Stergiou (CHRISTOS@TRUETRIPS.COM) to customize it to your wishes or budget. Go to TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM/SUMMERTRAVEL2021 for details, photos, and extras, including a side trip to the island of Antiparos.

SU MME R 2 0 21 | TOW NAND CO U NTRYMAG.COM

T & C U LT I M AT E I T I N E R A R I E S

You Can PROBABLY Go Soon…

On the new grand tour of Italy—Venice, Lake Como, Capri, and everything else we absolutely love the most. (Word is: July.)

DAYS 4–6 LIVE DOLCE FA R NI ENTE WHERE Lake Como. WHY It’s been a deluxe resort since Roman times—and they knew how to pick ’em. HOW You’ll arrive via private car from Venice (with a brief stop at Verona or the Allegrini winery). Grand hotels include Villa d’Este (the one and only), Tremezzo (great new beach club), and Victoria (good for families).

Over the next two days, with a guide and boat when you want them (or by bike, canoe, or helicopter), explore the surrounding towns: Griante, Cernobbio, Como, Brunate, Bellagio, Blevio, and Isola Comacina. And their restaurants. Too much excitement? There’s always Villa d’Este’s dreamy floating pool and spectacular gardens to consider, and the Tremezzo’s vast new T Spa.

The statue of the Emperor Augustus has quite a view from Monte Solaro, Capri’s highest point, out over the rocks of Faraglioni.

e’ve left nothing to chance—you’re staying at celebrated hotels, with priority access to monuments, museums, and culinary extravaganzas.

Plus tips for aperitivos-with-a-view.

Y I O R G O S KO R DA K I S (G R E E C E ) ; F R A N C E S C O L AG N E S E ( I TA LY )

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DAYS 1 – 3 BATHE IN BEAU T Y WHERE Venice and its islands. WHY It’s the object of our collective desires and will likely never be this tourist-free again. HOW A private water taxi will take you from the Venice airport to (the choice is yours) the grand Gritti Palace;

HOW TO BOOK IT

the resort-like Belmond Cipriani, on Giudecca; or the boutiquey Londra Palace. And then you’re off on a private introduction (or return) to the highlights: St. Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, the Rialto market, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the islands of Burano and Murano. Get lost, also, among the little streets, bridges, and silent, palace-ringed squares. There will be gondolas and Riva yachts to board, memorable meals, and a perfect finale: a night at the opera at the famous La Fenice theater.

DAYS 7– 8 CROON “LOVE IN PORTOFINO” WHERE Portofino. WHY Crescent of sand, colorful houses, bobbing yachts, and the Splendido hotel overlooking it all—what’s not to love? (The redone Splendido Mare, down by the sea, opened on May 1.) HOW Arrive from Como by car, with a stop at La Raia winery, and after checking in, just succumb to the glamour. Sip aperitifs, eat delicious dinners, and (on the second day), tour the other villages of the Italian Riviera from a private yacht.

DAYS 9 –1 2 H AV E D RI N KS W I T H TH E DAV ID WHERE Florence and the Chianti countryside. WHY It’s the cradle of the Renaissance and the ultimate place to experience Stendhal Syndrome: fainting from a surfeit of beauty. HOW Arrive after a stop in Lucca, check in (the Four Seasons?

Villa La Massa? Your call), and stroll: the baptistry, the Giotto bell tower, and the Duomo itself (reserved tickets will get you in and up to see Brunelleschi’s dome). On the

following days you’ll have an expert guide to the Uffizi and special afterhours entrée to the Accademia, for private aperitifs in the presence (gasp!) of Michelangelo’s David.

More: visits with the city’s master craftsmen, dining with its chefs, and a daytrip to Chianti.

DAYS 1 3 –1 5 F LI P T H E SWI TC H I N T H E S I ST I N E C H A P E L WHERE Rome. WHY The Eternal City requires (and rewards) homage. HOW Arrive by car after stops at two Tuscan treasures, San Gimignano and Siena, and check into one of our five recommended hotels (the de Russie and the Hassler among them), followed by dinner in Piazza Navona. Over the next two days you’ll tour the city’s highlights in a special-access way: the Forum and Colosseum, the Vatican museums (including opening up the Sistine Chapel before anyone else enters).

Haven’t yet seen the private Palazzo Colonna, one of Rome’s oldest and largest residences, and its art-filled Galleria Colonna? Now you will.

DAYS 16–19 SMELL THE LEMONS WHERE The Amalfi Coast and Capri. WHY Because they’re even more of a revelation now, without the crowds. HOW You’re booked on the fast train from Rome to Naples, where a driver will pick you up for a visit to either Pompeii or the Atlantis-esque flooded city at Campi Flegrei (snorkel among ancient underwater villas) before continuing on to your hotel in Positano (Le Sirenuse, Villa TreVille, or Il San Pietro). Over the next three days: Go on an exploratory Amalfi drive (the views! the lemons! the flowers!), making sure to visit Ravello, the Amalfi cathedral, and the Villa Cimbrone gardens.

Sail a private yacht to and around Capri. Laze on Positano’s Marina Grande beach. Or hike the aptly named Path of the Gods—both to work off all the divine meals you’re having and as a coda to your trip.

You’ll depart for home the next day from Naples.

This itinerary was developed with Andrea Grisdale of IC Bellagio, a specialist in Italy. Book it as is or work with Grisdale (ANDREA@ICBELLAGIO.COM) to customize it to your wishes or budget. Go to TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM/SUMMERTRAVEL2021 for details, photos, and extras.

TOWN AN D C OU NTRY M AG. CO M | SU M M ER 2 0 21

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T & C U LT I M AT E I T I N E R A R I E S

You Can Go Now, But PATIENCE Is Required…

On a private-plane, all-luxuries tour of seven great American parks.

(They’re our own back yard, but they’re booked until August.)

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DAYS 1 – 3 B E AW E ST RUC K I N T H E S I E R R AS WHERE Yosemite National Park. WHY It’s ground zero of conservationism—land so powerfully moving it was the first set aside by Congress solely for our pleasure (originally as a state park). HOW Land at Mariposa Airport and check into the 1927 Ahwahnee Hotel, a masterpiece of “parkitecture”: soaring stone, glass, and timber, views of several Yosemite icons, star-studded night skies.

In the morning hit the Panorama Trail with your guide, hiking from Glacier Point down to Yosemite Valley, passing Half Dome and two of America’s highest waterfalls (lunch is atop Nevada Fall). The next day it’s Mariposa Grove’s famed giant sequoias, then rafting on the Merced River. (Breathe deep: There’s nothing like the scent of the Sierras.)

DAYS 6–7 PL AY HIGH DESERT S O L I TA I R E WHERE Canyonlands and Arches national parks. WHY For the thousands of sandstone arches, spires, and eroded monoliths—our planet’s own surreal sculpture park. HOW First, fly from Page to Moab, Utah, for a half day of floating on the Colorado River, more accessible on this stretch than in the Grand Canyon.

Tonight and tomorrow you’ll sleep at rustic Sorrel River Ranch Resort and Spa, set on green pastures surrounded by dramatic cliffs. Head off in the morning on a 4X4 expedition (with hiking) into Arches, a high desert plateau dotted with salmon-colored creations. Your guide can take you way off-road here.

It’s bumpy, but the reward is total solitude, silence, and the setting sun turning the rocks red.

DAYS 8 – 9 M A K E T H E A L I E N S J E A LO U S WHERE Jackson and Grand Teton National Park. WHY They’re so stunning, a photo of them by Ansel

DAYS 4 – 5 A L I G H T O N M A RS WHERE Grand Canyon National Park and Lake Powell. WHY For a bird’seye view of 2 billion years of geologic history. HOW Fly from Yosemite to Grand Canyon Airport (near the South Rim) for a day of hiking: bucket list views, sublimely colored strata of ancient stone, fossils, traces of the area’s rich and ancient Native American cultures, and a champagne toast on a private lookout over the Colorado River, coursing more than a mile below you. A short flight whisks you next to Page, Arizona, and a car to Utah’s Amangiri—all luxuries set amid a landscape resembling Mars. The next morning, visit choice spots along Lake Powell’s 2,000 miles of shoreline, secluded bays, and aquatic caverns, all via chartered private boat.

Swim, tube, wakeboard, you name it.

(Followed by another night—yay!— at the Amangiri.)

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Adams was sent on the U.S. Voyagers I and II into outer space. HOW Fly from Moab to Jackson, Wyoming, check into the Amangani, then embark on an extraordinary scenic float on the Snake River, passing herds of elk and moose while eagles and ospreys hunt for their dinner. Yours will be served at a private riverside camp at sunset. You’ll depart early the next day for Grand Teton park, the most Instagrammable mountain range in the U.S. and a feast of wildlife: grizzly and black bears, bison, bighorn sheep, coyotes, and golden and bald eagles.

DAYS 1 0– 1 1 DA N C E W I TH WOLVE S WHERE Yellowstone National Park.

WHY America’s first national park is both its Serengeti, famous for its megafauna, and its Iceland, with thousands of geothermal features.

HOW A scenic two-hour drive gets you from the Amangani to Wyoming’s Lake Yellowstone Hotel, conveniently located in the heart of this spectacular wilderness of wolf packs

and bison herds. You’ll go in as deep as possible with your guide on the first day, and the next is fully backcountry: a horseback ride to (and from) fly-fishing on a remote lake or stream. Later, a plane will take you to Kalispell, Montana, gateway to Glacier National Park.

DAY 12 E X P LO R E A M E R I CA’S ALPS WHERE Glacier National Park. WHY For its glacier-carved peaks and valleys, and some 750 lakes. HOW After a night at the Lodge at Whitefish Lake, embark on an action-packed day as extreme or as easy as you like, with stops at overlooks, chalets, and historic sites (Native Americans first arrived here around 10,000 years ago). Après? A private champagne cruise on Whitefish Lake.

DAYS 1 3 –1 4 TOP I T A L L O F F WHERE At a ranch resort of your choice: Paws Up, the Ranch at Rock Creek, or Triple Creek Ranch, all an easy transfer away. WHY For first class pampering before your flight home.

Lake Powell was created in 1963 by the controversial flooding of Glen Canyon. It’s visible from outer space.

This itinerary was developed with Melissa Ladvala, the custom travel specialist at Mountain Travel Sobek. Book it as is or work with Ladvala (MELISSALADVALA@ MTSOBEK.COM) to customize it to your wishes or budget. Go to TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM/SUMMERTRAVEL2021 for details, photos, and extras.

SU MME R 2 0 21 | TOW NAND CO U NTRYMAG.COM

ROBERT JASO/TRUNK ARCHIVE

he private planes will transport you from park to park, and top guides will get you off the beaten path. (And for all you Aman junkies, we’ve scheduled stays at two. You’re welcome.)

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STA R S

SIGNS

G E M I N I ’ S S T O N E I S T H E P E A R L , E M A N A T I N G G L A M O U R A N D C O N F I D E N C E . C A N C E R ’ S I S R U B Y, S Y M B O L I Z I N G P A S S I O N , W H I L E L E O ’ S S T O N E , P E R I D O T , A T T R A C T S A B U N D A N C E A N D H A R M O N Y.

BY KATHARINE MERLIN

VIRGO

LIBRA

SCORPIO

MAY 22–JUNE 21

JUNE 22–JULY 22

JULY 23–AUGUST 23

AUGUST 24–SEPTEMBER 23

SEPTEMBER 24–OCTOBER 23

OCTOBER 24–NOVEMBER 22

In June it’s crucial to follow through on plans, but wait until the 22nd to finalize details. You now have opportunities to get on a more secure financial path. July brings complexities around shared interests, so try not to take a rigid stance. And August is all about communication and new horizons—so stretch your wings and follow your intuition.

Try to step back and do some strategizing in June. With Venus in your birth sign, your personal life will be more interesting. In July, though, it may be a struggle to find common ground with others, especially where finances are concerned; best to be diplomatic.

Getting details in focus and planning new adventures will take you exactly where you need to go in August.

June is the time for startups and networking. You’re going to get an energy boost from Mars after the 11th, and the wind is at your back.

In July others do not see eye to eye with you, and you’ll have to step back to deal with various personal issues. August, though, brings encouraging developments, and your choices will work very much in your favor.

With your ruling planet out of phase until June 22, don’t stress out over details. Life becomes more festive toward month’s end. The planets will be clashing in July, so try to stick to your plans, and do your best to avoid confrontations.

It may be hard to get away in August, but escape if you can.

Relaxation is your planetary mandate.

With Saturn in Aquarius clashing with Uranus in Taurus in June, you’re feeling pulled in different directions. More perspective is what you now need. Resistance you encounter in July will give way, so don’t overreact. By month’s end, your vision will clear. Turning points are what August is all about, and new success seems to be part of the story.

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Contacts at a distance are in the planetary spotlight in June, and Mars in Leo directs you to explore daring options. Emotionally, July will be full of ups and downs, so don’t take minor setbacks to heart; focus on creativity and life’s pleasures. August is a particularly interesting month for you where new friendships and environments are concerned, and you’ll be covering new ground.

GEMINI

CANCER

LEO

GRAFF , GRAFF.COM

DAVID YURMAN , DAVIDYURMAN.COM

SAGITTARIUS

CAPRICORN

AQUARIUS

PISCES

ARIES

TAURUS

NOVEMBER 23–DECEMBER 21

DECEMBER 22–JANUARY 20

JANUARY 21–FEBRUARY 19

FEBRUARY 20–MARCH 20

MARCH 21–APRIL 20

APRIL 21–MAY 21

Relationships, both personal and business, are accented in June. Positive change is on its way, but questions lurk. Have faith in your ideas in July, and don’t be deterred by others’ misgivings.

In August your ruling planet Jupiter’s retrograde motion is telling you to follow through and be precise. Your logic alone will convince others.

In June, Venus in your relationship angle brings more connection your way, and new possibilities in the air at work will be hard to pin down. July is a time when you must resist undue anxiety on the financial front and refresh the page in various ways. And in August, do research and seek out fresh options. Be prepared to be a trailblazer.

Work and play are in the cosmic spotlight in June, and you can accomplish much and have the kind of fun that really lifts your spirits. Work-related pressures in July may be a bit overwhelming, but your competence will bring unexpected rewards. Try not to emanate negativity early in August.

Even questionable plans are going to fall beautifully into place.

Despite confusion, new ventures and lifestyle changes will work out favorably in June. Be ready to time your moves with care. Even with some emotional turbulence in July, get out and socialize and plan time for your own pursuits. Others’ expectations may be overwhelming in August, but you seem to be carving out a new niche.

Putting creative plans into play is something of a theme in June, but try not to rush the pace. Details cohere near month’s end.

Others’ roadblocks need to be negotiated in early July, but your diplomacy will be rewarded. The Sun and new Moon in Leo accent entertainment in August, and new options seem to be opening up that will lift your spirits.

Emotionally direct communication will get you everywhere in June, but stress around lifestyle issues challenges you to stay calm. Don’t cling to the past in July. Saturn at the top of your chart is all about shouldering new responsibilities. Disagreements will lead to new understandings in August, and personal changes will bring more joy.

JOHN HARDY ($18,000), JOHNHARDY.COM

SEAN GILSON FOR ASSAEL ($7,800), NEIMANMARCUS.COM

ANGELA CUMMINGS ($5,200), TIINASMITHJEWELRY.COM

ELIZABETH LOCKE ($4,875), NEIMANMARCUS.COM

W. ROSADO ($9,460), SAKSFIFTHAVENUE.COM

PICCHIOTTI ($601,000), BIGHAM JEWELERS, NAPLES, FL, 239-434-2800

FOR ADDITIONAL READINGS BY KATHARINE MERLIN, GO TO TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM AND KATHARINEMERLIN.COM

TOW N AN D C OU NT RY MAG . CO M | SU M M ER 2 02 1

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Pharrell Williams

LET ’S BE GOOD to our

Communities How does music’s resident polymath find perfect harmony?

By giving back where he grew up. e had to bury my cousin on my birthday,” says Pharrell Williams. So the day the music producer and impresario turned 48 years old was devoted not to his own life but to one cut short at 25, that of Donovan Lynch. “It was bittersweet,” Williams says. “The way he died was bitter. Where he is right now is sweet.”

Lynch was gunned down by the police in his and Williams’s hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia, on March 26; Williams has just returned to Miami after speaking at the funeral. “I wasn’t able to deliver the speech with the fire and intention I wanted,” he says, his voice wavering, “because I was just choked with emotion.”

In the days after the shooting, the police department gave varying stories about whether Lynch had brandished a gun. The bodycam of the officer involved was never activated, a violation of department procedures, so no footage of the incident exists.

“It’s not just the loss of life. It’s also the cause of the loss of life,” Williams says, running his hands over his face. “And it’s a much larger problem, you know?” The family and other advocates have called for a federal investigation.

The epidemic of police violence is, Williams says, rooted in a four-century-old force of “gravity”—a weight, invisible to many white folks, that can manifest as a literal knee on the neck, though it is typically felt as a persistent and pernicious downward pull. “As a Black person, when you’re born in this country, you immediately feel a much heavier gravity,” he says.

“The gravity is one that we see in our rules and regulations and

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laws. We see it in the lack of options. We see it in what we’re fed, what is marketed to us. We see it in broken educational systems.”

At times this force can be crushing. “Knowing that if Donovan had been white he wouldn’t have gotten shot multiple times and left in the street for an inhumane amount of time, ’til the next morning, no gun in hand—that’s gravity. The race of the officer doesn’t pertain to the conversation, because if Donovan had been white they would have never shot him like that.”

Williams pulls his hands over his face, tears streaking from his glistening eyes. “So there is gravity. And there, too, is hope that things will change.”

It may be jarring to see the singer of “Happy” shed tears of anguish, but behind Williams’s fashion-forward image lies a creative soul with a deep commitment to social justice. Performing at the 2015 Grammy Awards, he reimagined his feel-good hit as a powerful statement of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Williams stood with backup dancers clad in black hoodies (in homage to Trayvon Martin) and struck the “hands up, don’t shoot” posture in solidarity with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

Six years later, it seems clear that recent events will drive Williams’s activism in new directions, though he can’t say yet what they will be. “I’m still processing. I don’t really have a lot of answers at the moment,” he says. “I think I’ve been so sad over this past week because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

There is an oft-cited (though unverified) factoid that claims that Williams was behind 43 percent of all hit records in 2003— either alone or as part of the Neptunes, his producing partnership with Chad Hugo. Regardless of whether that stat is true,

BY ALEX BHATTACHARJI PHOTOGRAPH BY MICAIAH CARTER STYLED BY MATTHEW HENSON

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S U MM E R 2 02 1 | TOW NAND CO U NTRYM AG. CO M

Pharrell Williams, photographed for T&C, wearing a Chanel jacket and jeans; Richard Mille Pharrell Williams limited edition RM 52-05 Tourbillon watch; Williams’s own Jacob & Co. necklaces and bracelets, and Chanel bracelets.

FOR DETAILS SEE PAGE 101

Prop styling by Steve Harivel at Ace Props. Production services by Shake Productions

Williams is undeniably one of the most successful, influential producers around—putting his Midas touch on hits by Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Ariana Grande, among others, and amassing 38 Grammy nominations and 13 wins. However, Williams features prominently in only a few chart-topping songs.

For years his philanthropic efforts mirrored this paradigm. He would speak softly but write a big check, making his mark primarily behind the scenes. (For example, he made the expansion of José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen possible through his unsolicited financial support. As Andrés says, “We wouldn’t be able to do without him.”) In the past year, however, Williams has taken center stage, piloting a pair of bold initiatives aimed at addressing disparities in entrepreneurship and the education system. As he puts it, “If it’s fixed and unfair, then it needs to be broken.” illiams has circumvented the expected pathways and pitfalls of pop music by bringing an entrepreneurial approach to his eclectic tastes—in fashion and art, film and TV, tech and textiles. His desire to nurture the same spirit led him to launch Black Ambition, a nonprofit initiative to support Black and Latinx entrepreneurs, in December.

Beyond simply rewarding innovation, Williams hopes the ventures will enrich and empower those communities. “We’re saying to ourselves, ‘Why are we in the position that we’re in?’ ” Williams says. “Because we don’t necessarily have a voice, because we don’t own enough businesses. It’s time for us to be part of the American pie chart.”

The program provides mentorship and financial support for startups in tech, design, healthcare, and consumer products and services. Entrepreneurs pitch their launches to advance in a pair of competitions, each of which culminates in awards ranging from $15,000 to $1 million. One competition draws from students and recent graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which Williams calls “the most fertile ground” to search for entrepreneurs.

Ahead of the launch, Williams was able to bring together supporters including Adidas, Chanel, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as such individual investors as venture capitalist Ron Conway and BuzzFeed co-founder Jonah Peretti. In addition, he recruited Virgil Abloh, CEO of the Off-White fashion line and artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear, to collaborate on the project.

“How do you combat systemic racism? Black Ambition is really a monument to experimenting in how to do that,” Abloh says. “Pharrell’s charisma steers the ship, but it’s also his business acumen—he knows his influence. He’s a passionate speaker, and he constantly reminds you of the bigger picture and what’s possible.… I think

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those attributes are very, very necessary in the world today. You need a spirit leader.”

Williams has one in his mother Carolyn, a former elementary school teacher who earned a doctorate in education. With her help, Williams learned as a child that his perception was wired differently from other people’s. He has synesthesia, a condition in which one sense stimulates another. In his case, hearing sounds causes him to see colors.

That’s what gives Yellow, his educational nonprofit, its name, and his experience with perceptual difference informs its mission. Consulting with advisers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and NASA, the program represents educational futurism in action: a holistic curriculum, mastery-based learning, immersive experiences, integrated student support, and an emphasis on career and creative skills and self-efficacy. Most of all, Yellow’s approach is to engage every type of learner. “We need our teachers to be able to reach every kid that they put their eyes on,” Williams says. “We need kids to walk away feeling inspired.”

The first physical Yellowhab microschool will launch this fall in Norfolk, Virginia; another location will be added in 2022. Before expanding to major cities across the country in the next five years, Yellow plans to open locations providing pre-K through workforce education throughout Virginia’s Hampton Roads region.

Pharrell Williams with students at his Virginia Williams’s emotional investment Beach summer camp. in his hometown is evident in all his work. He has said he loves Virginia for the progress it has made but is in love with it for its untapped potential. He is acutely aware that the state, like America, is a work in progress. Point Comfort, where the first enslaved Africans alighted onto these shores, in 1619, lies just across the bay from Virginia Beach, an oceanside tourist haven haunted by a history of racism and police bias.

In 2018 the police chief of Virginia Beach approached Williams, hoping he would address the city council over safety concerns on College Beach Weekend, an April event that attracts thousands of students, many of whom are from HBCUs. They could see only the potential for a spike in crime, despite police data that shows that has not been the case. Williams saw an opportunity to promote the city, its economy, and racial understanding.

He proposed a music and culture festival on the beach called Something in the Water.

Williams understood that Black music had the power to attract a large white audience to the city. “We bet on the fact that there were more people that love our culture,” Williams says. “Enough to come be with us and to dispel the stereotypes and whatever it is that they were saying about us.” He bet, in other words, on love over hate and pushed his chips onto the table.

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“We bet on the fact that there were more people that love our culture, enough to come be with us and to dispel the stereotypes.”

F E L L O W WA R R I O R S Bridget Gless Keller

GEHRY PARTNERS (RENDERING); COURTESY BREAKOUT (FARBER); GISELA SCHOBER/GETTY IMAGES/DEUTSCHE AIDS-STIFTUNG (MASIYIWAS)

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ew people who call Bel Air home would have much reason to venture 24 miles south to Watts, a very different slice of Los Angeles made infamous in 1965 by the riots that broke out following a physical confrontation with police after a 21-year-old Black man was pulled over for drunk driving. Today Watts has three of the city’s largest housing projects, in which dozens of gangs—59, to be exact—operate. It’s the sort of place where wearing blue, red, orange, or purple is verboten, unless you want to show your gang affiliation, and where volunteers form human shields on the streets so children can safely walk to school.

But Watts is also where Bridget Gless Keller, a jewelry designer, philanthropist, and fifth-generation Angelena, has spent the better part of the last decade volunteering at the Children’s Institute (CII), which brings early childhood education, therapy services, family support groups, youth activities, and crisis relief—in 2020 it provided food, laptops, and more— to its more than 30,000 clients. Since 2013 she has been spearheading the construction of a new building for the organization (she is now a trustee). Designed by the legendary Frank Gehry, who took on the project pro bono, the 20,000-square-foot space, set to open this fall, will serve mainly as the fifth campus for the CII, the largest children-focused agency in L.A., founded in 1906. There will be various free programs to help kids deal with the trauma of poverty—and, most important, protect them from the lure of gangs— including therapy, arts, sports, and mentorship. The CII works with caregivers, too, helping them find jobs and teaching parenting skills. “They embrace the entire family, because you can’t just heal a kid and then stick him back into a dysfunctional household,” Keller says.

As building committee chair, Keller has made sure

The new Frank Gehry– designed campus of the Children’s Institute will open in Watts, L.A., this fall.

the new campus will have offices for the Watts Gang Task Force, an all-volunteer group made up of former gang members, parents, police officers, and elected officials, and the Community Safety Partnership.

Established by the LAPD a decade ago, CSP is a gamechanging initiative that has fundamentally altered the way policing is done in a neighborhood that was once notorious for its fractured, and violent, relationship to law enforcement. With CSP, officers commit to an area for at least five years and undergo training by the Urban Peace Institute. They attend neighborhood meetings, organize soccer games, mentor youth, and collaborate with social workers. “When the police are integrated into a community, everything works better,” Keller says.

Strive and Tsitsi Masiyiwa When Zimbabwean husband and wife duo Strive and Tsitsi Masiyiwa founded their Higherlife Foundation in 1996, it was focused on education initiatives for vulnerable African children. Today the foundation’s work encompasses healthcare, leadership development, food insecurity, and building rural economies, among other projects. The Masiyiwas have also expanded their reach: Strive, a billionaire telecoms mogul who serves on the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Board of Advisors, was appointed the African Union Special Envoy, to mobilize the private sector response to Covid-19, and he is also on the board of Netflix. Tsitsi is a founding member of the African Philanthropy Forum and is a member of the Generation Unlimited Global Leadership Council.

Take a recent incident: On a Sunday afternoon a child ran out from a barbecue holding a gun. But because police officers were well acquainted with the community, they knew the gun was a toy—and soon thereafter, plastic toy guns were pulled from local bodegas. When shots are fired in the area, therapists from the Children’s Institute now accompany police to the scene. The numbers prove the system works: Violent crime in Watts’s housing developments has decreased by 70 percent.

“I always say that Watts is ground zero for despair, but it’s also a place of resilience and hope,” Keller says. This Gehry campus will mark one such ripple of change. “The people of Watts are deserving of world class architecture.” Leena Kim

Michael Farber In countless meetings with community leaders in cities like Detroit and Baltimore, Michael Farber found that they often struggle to raise the small amounts they need for programs that would pay huge dividends.

“Philanthropic grants go toward more established 501(c)(3)s,” he says. “Even $1,000 can give these people the breathing room they need to do their work and still pay their rent.” His Breakout Foundation gives unrestricted grants—to artists running collectives, health educators conducting free seminars for local residents, and many more—and 89 percent of his grantees are BIPOC. Recently he has also begun making documentary films to amplify the work of his formerly unsung heroes.

Taraji P. Henson, photographed at her Los Angeles home, wearing a Chanel jacket, tank, skirt, and belt.

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Taraji P. Henson

LET ’S BE GOOD to

Ourselves Mental health is not something people want to talk about.

Taraji P. Henson has something she’d like to discuss with them. he first thing we wanted to do was get Black people talking about mental health,” Taraji P. Henson says. “Let’s just get it out there. I’ll say something.

I’ll break the ice.”

That’s just what she’s done. Since founding in 2018 the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation (named after her father, a Vietnam War veteran who struggled with both post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder), Henson—who won a Golden Globe for her role as Cookie Lyon on the TV series Empire, having earlier earned an Oscar nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—has been a tireless advocate for addressing mental health in the Black community. And never have such efforts been so necessary; according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, more than 17 percent of non-Hispanic Black adults in the United States struggle with mental illness, including depression and anxiety.

In the last year a global pandemic and catastrophic racial reckoning shook the United States to its core and pushed Black America to the brink. I’m speaking to Henson on the first day of Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd; two weeks later Daunte Wright would be shot and killed by the police in a suburb of Minneapolis, just 10 miles north of the courthouse where the Chauvin trial was being held. The numbers are staggering but not surprising in light of the way issues of race, wealth, and health inequity have been exacerbated in the past year. If that isn’t enough, there are issues within the community that stigmatize

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mental health due to religious beliefs, lack of information, criminalization, and medical mistrust.

Through her foundation, a nonprofit that raises money via grants, donations, and events, including a gala, Henson is providing free therapy sessions, funding scholarships for Black students who want to pursue careers in the mental health field, and hosting a Facebook program, “Peace of Mind with Taraji,” which offers viewers an opportunity to learn more about mental illness, see what a therapy session looks like in real time, and hear testimonies from such celebrities as Gabrielle Union and Mary J. Blige. Henson’s work is an intervention for the Black community in the hope of creating healing, survival, and joy.

She has also been active in trying to change the system from the inside. In 2019 Henson testified in front of the Congressional Black Caucus Emergency Task Force on Black Youth Suicide and Mental Health, saying, “I want to use my celebrity and my voice to put a face to this. This is a national crisis.” Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman applauded her efforts, saying, “We can do the legislative piece…but it is a voice like yours that helps to elevate the discussion so that the people will react to it.”

Here, Henson talks with T&C from her home in Los Angeles about addressing the stigmas around mental health, finding her footing as a philanthropist, and what real change will look like.

What inspired you to create a foundation that would support Black people’s mental health and wellness?

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Henson with students from Washington, DC’s Sousa Middle School during a Boris L. Henson Foundation beautification project.

Your show, “Peace of Mind with Taraji,” is radical in addressing mental health issues in the Black community by incorporating celebrities, real people, and actual therapists.

TPH: Our mission was to clear up any misconceptions of what mental health [issues] are like. With PTSD, a lot of people think, Oh, I didn’t go to war, I don’t suffer from that. But most people suffer from PTSD, especially today watching the news—seeing George Floyd get murdered on television and watching it over and over. We needed to make people understand that there are layers to this and put faces to it.

The show offers people a look into the process of therapy.

TPH: A mission for the show is for people to see what [therapy] looks like. You laugh, you cry, you have a therapist come in to give you some tools and exercises to do. We talk about our resource guide, and we direct the audience to it if they’re suffering. This is a place where you can heal, and we show what it looks like. Tracie and I are very vulnerable; there’s my personal stuff, and she shares personal things, and that’s what therapy looks like, right? It’s not some daunting, scary place.

You’ve got to think about therapy like a relationship; there has to be a vibe. My therapist is Black, and she’s younger than me. I see myself in her. She gets my mind because she’s a Virgo. She knows how I think.

What does the face of Black mental health look like in America?

TPH: When we started the foundation, the more we did research, S U MM E R 2 02 1 | TOW NAND CO U NTRYM AG. CO M

Black men and boys face myriad societal challenges that affect their mental health, including racial bias, police brutality, health disparities, and generational trauma.

How does this affect them?

TPH: They have to be the strongest, and they aren’t allowed to be vulnerable. If I’m to be in a relationship with a Black man, how is that going to work if he’ll never show me his vulnerability?

Where’s the balance there? Black men are suffering. Look at how the world treats them. And then Covid hit, and we had to find the power to switch the narrative. Look at how many people—Black people, people of color— we were able to help during this pandemic. What I learned about men is that men need to be nurtured and singled out, because they often just don’t feel heard.

“You’ve got to think about therapy like a relationship; there has to be a vibe.

My therapist gets my mind because she’s a Virgo.

She knows how I think.”

You had never founded a nonprofit before.

Who was a model for you in terms of becoming a philanthropist?

TPH: Alicia Keys and Keep a Child Alive. I’m an ambassador, and if I sign my name to anything, I’m not just going to sign my name. I went to South Africa, I made sure that I met the woman who runs the organization there. I saw the work being done with children and how she was saving these babies whose parents were wiped out because of AIDS and being raised by their grandparents. I saw the work.

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the more statistics affected me. Our children are also in a pipeline from schools straight to prison. They’re suffering from traumatic situations at home, even in school. When I was a teacher in [the L.A. neighborhood of] Crenshaw, I was teaching special education kids, but I was also in the middle of a pipeline to prison. They were all Black boys, and the system was set up to fail them. What if I didn’t choose special ed? I might have never encountered these kids for whom shootouts and shell casings in the wall are normalized. The pain is what we have been normalizing. Having a Black son, it was just so much.

Black women also face specific obstacles when it comes to mental health and overall wellness. What have you learned from your therapy journey and the foundation’s work?

TPH: The more research I did—and [looking at] my own sessions—I started thinking about us as a culture, because we have learned to normalize so much trauma since slavery—since slavery. That’s in our blood, that’s innately in us to be strong.

We have to take the veil off of that for the strong Black woman.

I understand why we needed that, because we’re always at the bottom of the totem pole, and we need to feel validated. That’s the thing about Black people: Joy is our freedom. We will always tap into that. But then people can take that and manipulate it. They think, Oh, a Black woman, she’s strong, she doesn’t need medicine.

So she ends up dying in the emergency room or dying giving birth.

It’s deep for us.

What does change look like?

TPH: Legislation, legislation, legislation. Cops have got to stop showing up to situations where someone’s having a manic moment, especially when it’s us, because there’s no empathy when it comes to us.

When we go to jail, where’s the empathy? You’re going to put me in jail for a disease that I didn’t ask for. That’s like criminalizing me for the color of my skin.

SCOTT MIDGETT/COURTESY BLHF

TARAJI P. HENSON: I was struggling.

My son was struggling, and I was trying to find help. It was difficult looking for someone culturally competent or who looks like us so we could feel safe. I was frustrated, and I called Tracie Jade Jenkins, who now runs my foundation. I’ve known her since the seventh grade, and she has suffered from anxiety her entire life. We struck up a conversation, and I was like, “This is amazing.” You know, I can afford [therapy], but just imagine all the millions of Black people who can’t afford it.

Then I started thinking even further.

The reason we don’t have many culturally competent therapists or therapists of color is because we don’t talk about it at home. My children don’t even know it’s possible to study this field in college.

Something has to happen—we’ve got to talk about it and make some changes.

F E L L O W WA R R I O R S Jamie Raskin

C O U R T E SY T H E R AS K I N FA M I LY ( R AS K I N S ) ; PA R I S TAV I T I A N / C O U R T E SY S N F ( D R AC O P O U LO S )

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aryland Congressman Jamie Raskin was thrust onto the national stage earlier this year when he was chosen by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to lead the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump on the charge of inciting a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6. On that day Raskin, like his fellow lawmakers, had been forced to take cover in the building—and put on a gas mask—as throngs of far-right protesters spent hours defacing art, breaking glass, looting offices, and gravely injuring police officers. It also happened to be the day Raskin had brought his daughter Tabitha and son-in-law Hank with him to work, so that they could witness the counting of electoral votes and what should have been an iconic moment in American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power.

Instead they hid under a desk and thought they were going to die.

In the midst of all of that, Raskin and his wife were grieving a terrible tragedy at home: the death of their son Thomas (Tommy to those who knew him), who took his own life on New Year’s Eve. The family had buried him only the day before the Capitol insurrection.

“Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling, radiant mind,” Raskin wrote in an emotional tribute. The 25-year-old had been a second-year student at Harvard Law School, his parents’ alma mater. (His father is a former constitutional law professor; his mother Sarah Bloom Raskin was President Obama’s deputy secretary of the Treasury.) In his twenties he began battling depression, a disorder that afflicts nearly 19 percent of Americans, with those in the 18–29 age group representing the highest percentage (21 percent) of adults who experience

symptoms. The pandemic’s toll on mental health has been undeniably catastrophic. In June 2020, 40 percent of adults in the country reported dealing with mental health issues and substance abuse.

“Tommy’s struggle showed me that our obligation to treat mental health needs is just as urgent as our obligation to treat physical health needs,” Raskin says.

“In theory, federal law governing health insurance now requires them to be treated equally, but this remains more of a paper commitment than a living reality.”

Most of the nation’s counties, for example, don’t have a child psychiatrist, and treatments for depression aren’t easily accessible for many families in need. In March the Maryland General Assembly unanimously passed a law—renamed the Thomas Bloom Raskin Act—that will establish a crisis hotline that not only

connects callers with counselors but also periodically checks in on them (the program launches in July).

“The state of our society is a crucial component in how we are all doing,” Raskin says. Covid-19 is hardly the only major stressor. “The racism, the misogyny, the irrational thinking and conspiracy theories, the public ridicule and hostility we have allowed to fester in America, especially on the internet, create a difficult emotional and social climate for everyone.” Next up for the congressman: passing a bill to get the National Institutes of Health to complete the first independent study on the damaging effects of social media on children’s emotional, physical, and cognitive development. “We’re reaching a crisis point on this specific issue,” he says. Then he’s writing a book about Tommy.

Leena Kim

Rep. Jamie Raskin with his wife Sarah Bloom Raskin and their children, from left: Tabitha, Tommy, and Hannah.

Andreas Dracopoulos As co-president of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, established after the death of its namesake Greek shipping tycoon 25 years ago, Andreas Dracopoulos (Niarchos’s great-nephew) manages an international organization that, since its founding, has awarded more than $3.1 billion through more than 4,900 grants to nonprofits both at home and abroad. Just a sampling of the SNF’s far-reaching impact includes: the complete overhaul of the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library, which reopened last summer; $75 million to Rockefeller University to expand its campus; $100 million for global Covid-19 relief; and a staggering $860 million to build the SNF’s cultural center in Athens, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. In recent years Dracopoulos has turned the SNF’s focus to strengthening Greece’s public healthcare system. In 2017 the organization pledged $500 million to launch the Health Initiative, which supports such projects as the construction of new state-of-the-art hospitals and the funding of education programs. Mental health is also a top priority. This April, Dracopoulos signed a $15 million, five-year partnership with the Child Mind Institute that will bring the U.S.-based nonprofit’s expertise overseas, to better serve the mental health needs of Greece’s children and youth.

Hugh Evans, photographed at SoFi Stadium, which features approximately 70,000 seats, wearing a Ralph Lauren jacket, sweater, and trousers.

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Hugh Evans

LET ’S BE GOOD to

Each Other He’s determined to cure humanity’s gravest problems—and the only thing bigger than his ambition is his Rolodex. n a recent Sunday, Hugh Evans was working the room—if you can call it that—at the 70,000-seat SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. There were 25,000 fully vaccinated people in attendance, plus plenty of performers to greet (Jennifer Lopez, H.E.R., Eddie Vedder), hosts to shmooze (Ben Affleck, David Letterman, Gayle King), and a prince and pregnant duchess to thank for serving as co-chairs.

They had gathered to film Vax Live, the latest mega-event staged

by Global Citizen, the group Evans co-founded and of which he is CEO. Last year, in April, Global Citizen produced “One World: Together at Home,” a television and online special broadcast on all the major networks and hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert. The list of performers involved reads like a Wikipedia page of the most famous contemporary musicians: Lady Gaga, Chris Martin, Lizzo, John Legend, Taylor Swift, Elton John. The virtual event reportedly raised nearly $128 million from corporations and foundations for coronavirus healthcare workers to receive protective gear and other essentials. The only other fundraiser in history to raise a comparable amount was Live Aid in 1985.

“If I’m honest it was pretty stressful,” Hugh, 38, says now of executing such a massive undertaking at the height of Covid chaos. “It was the first time in my life I herniated a disc! But we knew as soon as Covid struck that our mission—to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030—could not get back on track if we didn’t first end this.”

I met Hugh in Perth in 2011, when I was prime minister of Australia and he was campaigning to get the national government

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to pledge funding to eradicate polio. Immediately I was impressed by his preparedness to speak truth to power and his passionate intensity. Here was a young man who had found his true north: He was determined to dedicate his life to ending global poverty.

But the truth is, he seems to have been born with this moral compass. By age 12 the Australian schoolboy was participating in fundraisers to address famine in Ethiopia; at 14, after witnessing extreme poverty on a trip to the Philippines, he knew he’d devote himself to eradicating it. In 2002, at age 19, he co-founded Australia’s first youth-run aid organization, the Oaktree Foundation.

Six years later, with dozens of successful philanthropic campaigns under his belt and friendships with countless famous do-gooders and world leaders, he launched what is now Global Citizen, which, alongside such entities as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UN, has done more than anything I can think of to raise awareness of, and dollars for, the world’s neediest people.

“Extreme poverty is a $350 billion per year challenge. It can’t be addressed with a water well here and a black tie dinner there,” he says. “We’re building a movement that leverages millions of people around the world to convince governments to move. That’s what has enabled us to secure $48 billion in commitments from world leaders. We are holding governments’ feet to the fire 24/7.

It’s the power of global democracy at work.”

In the last year and a half, with the world facing greater crisis than even he had fathomed, Hugh has stepped up as a true savior. I have not been surprised. From the moment I met him back in Perth, I have never seen him waver. Year after year, he has channeled all his energy into building a sophisticated global

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movement to drive change. Whatever title someone holds or their level of fame, I have never seen Hugh daunted. His sense of purpose enables him to override every obstacle and stay on course. He always finds a way to make a connection.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle chaired Global Citizen’s Vax Live , which aired in May, to raise funds for vaccine access around the world.

TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT

DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, director-general of the World Health Organization I was introduced to Hugh around a decade ago, when I was the minister of foreign affairs of Ethiopia, and Global Citizen invited me to join one of their events in Central Park. Hugh’s energy, vision, and passion are infectious. He has made a real difference in not just raising awareness of the critical challenges facing the world’s most vulnerable people but in mobilizing and motivating organizations, from governments and philanthropists to the corporate world. Global Citizen is also committed to informing and influencing young people, which is critical.

Idris and Sabrina Elba work with Global Citizen to support farmers in Sierra Leone facing the fallout of climate change.

IDRIS ELBA, actor and UN goodwill ambassador for the International Fund for Agricultural Development When I was working with Hugh and Global Citizen on the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Sierra Leone, I saw firsthand how his efforts radically change lives and communities for the better. He’s a strong and empathetic leader who sees the big picture and works tirelessly to maximize his impact.

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JOHN KERRY, former U.S. secretary of state, currently special presidential envoy for climate I’m personally grateful for Hugh’s focus on the climate crisis and the spotlight Global Citizen has helped to shine on the intersections among issues like climate, poverty, public health, and injustice. He has a remarkable ability to bring together unlikely but influential partners in the service of work that matters in every corner of the world.

ERNA SOLBERG, prime minister of Norway Hugh Evans is a visionary.

He has the ability to convert ideas into action. He has the capacity to make people want to act and contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. And last spring Global Citizen saw the need to mobilize to fight the pandemic.

PRIYANKA CHOPRA JONAS, actress and Global Citizen ambassador Hugh and I met in September 2015. I was filming a TV show in Montreal, and I was invited to present at the Global Citizen concert in New York City. His dedication to the cause and his passion for meaningful change are magnetic and really drew me in.

Hugh believes that everyone has a role to play in tackling the world’s biggest problems—from world leaders to engaged citizens to billionaires—through Global Citizen’s Give While You Live campaign, which we launched together in 2019. He works tirelessly and is always looking several steps ahead to understand how philanthropic action can unlock government action. He understands deeply how both systems can work together to effect change, and he masterfully coordinates these efforts to make the biggest impact.

So many philanthropic leaders pledge money or espouse ideas without putting action behind them. There’s a sense of urgency in everything Hugh does, which is crucial, because we’re fighting urgent problems like extreme poverty and climate change. I have hope for the future knowing that Hugh and Global Citizen are fighting to make an impact for this generation and the ones beyond.

AMINA MOHAMMED, deputy secretary-general of the UN In 2014, when I met Hugh, he was building a platform that sat at the nexus of pop culture and policy. This space was a new frontier for the UN, and our collaboration with him was born out of the need to popularize our sustainable development goals to tackle gargantuan injustices, from climate change to gender inequalities to poverty. With Global Citizen, Hugh has unlocked funding and resources. His movement recognizes that all of us—heads of state, celebrities, or global citizens—have some level of influence to effect change.

NOAM GALAI/GETTY IMAGES/GLOBAL CITIZEN (EVANS WITH JACKMAN); KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES/GLOBAL CITIZEN VAX LIVE (PRINCE HARRY); COURTESY GLOBAL CITIZEN (CHOPRA JONAS); COURTESY IFAD/RODNEY QUARCO (ELBAS)

HUGH JACKMAN, actor and Global Citizen adviser I have been a supporter of Global Citizen from the very beginning—maybe 12 years. Our first big meeting was a dinner in my living room. Hugh used to sleep on our couch. He and I first met at a conference in 2008 where Australians came together to imagine what our country (and the world, for that matter) can and should look like in the year 2020. We spent hours talking, and it quickly became apparent to me that Hugh was not only incredibly smart and driven but that he was going to be a great leader for the younger generation. I almost immediately got on the Hugh Evans train, because if you want to make a difference in the world, particularly in the area of extreme poverty—something I’m most interested in helping to eradicate—his plan is so much better than anyone else’s.

Most of us are stuck in traditional ideas of how to make change.

But Hugh’s idea was to create a movement for the next generation— an idea where millions of young, like-minded people could wield a lot of power and get the attention of our world leaders.

F E L L O W WA R R I O R S Baby2Baby

COURTESY BABY2BABY (PATRICOF AND WEINSTEIN); AFRICAN PEDIATRIC FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM/KARIN SCHERMBRUCKER (CHILD); COURTESY INTERSOS (MIGRANTS)

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everal factors dictate social capital in L.A.; for new moms in town, the most important is being involved with Baby2Baby, a nonprofit that supplies diapers and essentials to children living in poverty.

Since 2011 the organization has been led by co-CEOs Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein, who have cannily leveraged their celebrity friendships—Patricof is a former model and the wife of Hollywood producer Jamie Patricof; Weinstein is a former lawyer married to Brian Weinstein, president of Bad Robot Productions— to grow Baby2Baby from a grassroots endeavor to one of the city’s starriest nonprofits.

Its list of board members and ambassadors reads like a who’s who of cool moms: Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Nicole Richie, Julie Bowen, Kerry Washington, Kate Hudson, Mindy Kaling, Jennifer Meyer, Amy Adams, and Whitney Wolfe Herd. And though a simple Instagram plug from any of these individuals can be hugely influential, they do more than just lend a name. “They host events for major donations, spend time with the families we serve, weave Baby2Baby into the DNA of their own companies, and give millions of items and dollars year after year,” Weinstein says.

“At the end of the day, they are all moms and have a natural connection to our mission.”

Ten years ago Baby2Baby was a three-person team—its co-CEOs and an intern worked out of a tiny L.A. warehouse. Today it’s a national organization that has distributed 175 million diapers and other basic necessities to more than a million children in 100 cities.

The duo lobbied the state of California to eliminate sales tax on diapers; the change took effect January 2020. “One out of three moms in this country struggles to afford diapers, and diapers have always been and continue to be our biggest need,” Weinstein says.

Then came their greatest test yet: Covid-19.

“We feel the last nine years prepared us for this very moment,” Patricof says. Last March diaper requests rose by 350 percent, and Baby2Baby had the infrastructure in place to meet that need immediately, providing 25 million diapers to countless parents who were resorting to using newspapers and towels. In April 2020, FEMA relied on the nonprofit to alleviate the national formula shortage. And, like many other organizations around the world, Baby2Baby quickly pivoted to supplying hand sanitizer, masks, soap, and emergency kits to children living in shelters where social distancing wasn’t possible. Since the pandemic began, Baby2Baby has donated 85 million essential items. But Patricof and Weinstein aren’t celebrating just yet. “The country is opening up for so many, but the families we serve continue to be devastated by the aftermath of the pandemic, so we have our work cut out for us for years to come,” Patricof says.

When natural disaster strikes, Baby2Baby is there too. Earlier this year, when a spate of severe winter storms created a vast blackout in Texas, leaving millions of residents without heat, power, food, or shelter, the charity sent more than 1 million necessities, such as diapers, water, coats, socks, and blankets. And they managed to do it all in just five days. How? By mobilizing their celebrity ambassadors and launching a social media campaign, of course. Leena Kim

INTERSOS Migrant children were especially vulnerable at the outset of the pandemic in hardhit countries like Italy. This Rome-based nonprofit, which turns 30 next year, came to their rescue, adapting the mobile health units it sends to war-torn countries like Yemen and Lebanon to provide lifesaving aid to underserved communities in Italy.

The mission abroad continues too, and its humanitarian workers are stationed in 19 countries, where they have assisted 5 million people and allocated more than $11.5 million to humanitarian projects.

The ELMA Group of Foundations What do South Africa’s Solidarity Fund, NEST360°, and the Jazz Foundation of America have in common? They’re grantees of the ELMA Group of Foundations, which invests in high-impact organizations focused on children’s healthcare and education, humanitarian relief, social enterprises, and youth development through music. In the past year the group, founded by Clive Calder, responded to the pandemic by expanding testing capacities, securing PPE, providing oxygen, and training health workers, with a focus on Africa. Up next: supporting grantees as they recover from the past year and prepare for whatever may come.

Marlo Thomas

LET ’S BE GOOD to our

Children Marlo Thomas is America’s most steadfast philanthropist.

She also might be its most successful one. Here’s why. arlo Thomas has a lot on her mind. A script to read. A podcast to record. A book to write.

Her new Williams-Sonoma collection of entertaining essentials. Women’s rights. Gun control laws. And always: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “I honestly can’t tell you where my thoughts of St. Jude begin and where they end. If I’m not in a board meeting, I’m on the phone talking to a corporate sponsor, working on a fundraising video, or speaking at a hospital event,” she says. Sleep is no escape. “I even dream about the kids and their families,” she adds.

Fighting for those who are desperate is Thomas’s birthright.

It’s November 1937, and Thomas’s father doesn’t have the money to pay the $70 hospital bill for his wife, who has just given birth.

Feeling hopeless, the struggling nightclub performer darts into a church. He feels an inspiration to pray to St. Jude Thaddeus of his Catholic faith, the patron saint of lost causes. Danny Thomas proposes a bargain: Help the first-time father provide for his family, and in return he’ll build a shrine to the saint. He places seven of the 10 dollars in his pocket in the collection dish and heads back into the cold Detroit night.

Fifteen years later Danny Thomas is one of America’s most popular comedians. His sitcom Make Room for Daddy debuts in 1953, and during its 11-year run he perfects the spit take. He

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performs in Vegas, hanging out with buddies Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. He lives in an opulent Beverly Hills mansion with his wife Rose Marie and their three kids, and the most remarkable part of this story: Thomas keeps his side of the bargain. He starts raising funds for a hospital. Not a wing. Not a lab. He imagines an entire star-shaped medical center devoted to treating and curing children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. And this vision materializes in Memphis.

“Health justice” is a recently coined phrase, but Thomas grasped the concept early. His parents emigrated from Lebanon and settled in Toledo, Ohio, a poor, multiethnic community. His mother relied on her sister to deliver 12 babies. Two died. He lost friends to treatable illnesses like appendicitis and influenza. “So my father sees firsthand the inadequacy of healthcare in this country: Rich kids go to the doctor; poor kids die,” says Marlo Thomas on a video call from her photograph-filled study in Manhattan.

She speaks of St. Jude with the passion of a parent. She’s proud of its achievements, and she wants everyone to support it. In 2019 donations were almost $1.8 billion. Thomas is grateful but not surprised. “It’s a success because it’s the real deal,” she explains.

“St. Jude actually saves children’s lives. And we are exactly, 100 percent who we say we are. No patient pays for anything. No bill to anyone, ever. We want every child to get the same first class care.”

When St. Jude opened, on February 4, 1962, it was the first

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Marlo Thomas, photographed at her Manhattan home, wearing an Akris sweater; Brunello Cucinelli pants; and Pomellato earrings, bracelet, and rings.

FOR DETAILS SEE PAGE 101

Hair by Steven Rice. Makeup by Eric Barnard. Tailoring by Jessica Yuen

1950s: At 18, Thomas makes her TV debut in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis playing a part credited as “Frank’s girlfriend.”

1960s: Thomas conceives and stars as “Ann Marie” in That Girl, the first sitcom about a single working woman.

1970s: Thomas conceives, executive-produces, and performs on the stereotype-shattering album Free to Be... You and Me. A TV special wins both an Emmy and a Peabody award.

1980s: Thomas wins an Emmy for Best Dramatic Actress for Nobody’s Child, which spotlights mental health issues.

1990s: Thomas has a recurring part on Friends as the mother of Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston, who becomes an ardent supporter of St. Jude. “She’s a saint,” Thomas says of Aniston.

2000s: Thomas has a four-episode arc as a judge on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, because no Hollywood career is complete without this credit.

2010s: Thomas stars on Broadway in the one-act play George Is Dead, by her best friend, Elaine May. 2020s: As they celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, Thomas and Phil Donahue publish What Makes a Marriage Last and launch a delightful podcast, Double Date. t one time Thomas did not believe she would ever marry, but in 1977 Marlo went on Phil Donahue’s Chicago-based talk show. They bantered and blushed in a real-life romcom

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From top: Thomas with her father as he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985; with husband Phil Donahue, circa 1979; with St. Jude spokesperson Jennifer Aniston.

meet-cute. When the show ended, Donahue declared, “You are really fascinating.” Thomas responded, “Whoever is the woman in your life is very lucky.” Soon she became that girl.

On the podcast Thomas describes the courtship succinctly. “We fell in love. We had dinner. We went to bed. And that was it.” When asked to select her two favorite photographs in her study, she instantly reaches for one of her and Donahue in Rome. The two sit on a sporty Vespa. Her arms are wrapped around his waist and her smile is radiant. The second photo is from Christmas morning 1990. At the time, Thomas and Donahue were living in Connecticut, while her family remained in California. She would cry during the holidays, feeling lonely, so that year Donahue cajoled her parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews into coming east. Thomas gave them all white terry cloth robes, which they wear in the photo. Instead of gifts, family members were asked to prepare something creative. A niece made a documentary. A nephew wrote a song. “It was a great Christmas,” Thomas says. “And then, six weeks later, my father was dead.”

Danny Thomas founded the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) in 1957 to raise funds and awareness for the hospital, and he remained dedicated to this cause until his death. He made it clear to his children that building St. Jude was his promise and not their burden. Still, all three took up the cause willingly. “My father was very proud of his heritage,” Thomas says. “And he wanted to say to America, ‘You let us in, and see? That was a good idea.’ ” Next he tapped his friends in entertainment, arranging benefit performances by Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Marilyn Monroe, and Sammy Davis Jr. Early on, Elvis Presley donated the presidential yacht, the USS Potomac, to St. Jude. (Presley had purchased the Potomac as part of a tax scheme by his infamous manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Thomas flipped the yacht for $62,500.) St. Jude fundraisers

BETTMANN ARCHIVE (WITH DANNY); DANNY FELD/NBCU PHOTO (WITH ANISTON); SONIA MOSKOWITZ/GETTY IMAGES (WITH DONAHUE)

fully integrated children’s hospital in the South. The mission to provide travel, housing, and treatment to patients regardless of religion, race, or the family’s financial status required a huge fundraising effort.

Two generations of the Thomas family have met this challenge through a savvy combination of harnessing Hollywood talent, using traditional grassroots strategies, and forming innovative retail relationships.

The “show must go on” mentality extended to the pandemic lockdown. Under Thomas’s stewardship, fundraising quickly pivoted.

The traditional St. Jude Memphis Marathon Weekend moved from an in-person event to a virtual one, drawing participants from every state and 72 countries. On Giving Tuesday, the gaming community raised $3 million in 10 hours. Corporate sponsors stepped up.

While the hospital’s purpose is serious, the result is joyful. “Comedy built St. Jude,” Thomas says. “If you go, you’ll notice that you don’t hear crying there.” She recalls once giving a tour of the hospital and making the same observation in an elevator to reporters. Just then, with sitcom timing, the door opened and a woman with a screaming, crying child stepped in. Awkward. So Thomas leaned down and asked, “What’s the matter, sweetie?” The woman answered, “Oh, she’s driving me crazy. She doesn’t want to go home!”

In the Thomas household, laughter and service were givens. Like most kids in Beverly Hills, Marlo and her younger siblings, Tony and Terre, were given money on Christmas. Unlike most, they were then instructed to give it away.

By 16, Thomas was going door-to-door with a gun control petition.

The activism energized her. “I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and get more signatures.”

After earning a teaching degree from the University of Southern California, Thomas followed in her father’s footsteps as a performer, creator, and producer. Listing all her career achievements would fill an old-timey Manhattan phone book, so instead here is one highlight from each decade to show the breadth, depth, and quality of her work:

would become some of Hollywood’s most glamorous galas. Bette Midler performed. Robin Williams, who starred in Dead Poets Society, which was produced by Marlo’s brother Tony, performed. One year Bill Cosby brought down the house. (When asked about the Cosby revelations and conviction decades later, Thomas said she was “absolutely floored.”)

These dinners took seven months to plan, and while a wellcrafted, heart-wrenching video could move David Geffen to give an additional million dollars, St. Jude had even loftier goals. In 2004 Thomas launched the Thanks + Giving initiative, which targeted retail sponsorships around the holidays. “It was going to have to be a $100 million program or there was no point in doing it,” she says.

Eight years later they blew past that goal. Meanwhile, individual St. Jude donors hold an astonishing 30,000 fundraising events annually that range from dog washes to yogathons to a SpaceX initiative led by commander Jared Isaacman. (Isaacman learned about the hospital from a Las Vegas benefit—so don’t cancel those rubber chicken dinners just yet.)

When the hospital opened, the survival rate for childhood leukemia was 4 percent. Today it hovers around 94 percent. The overall survival rate for childhood cancer has jumped from 20 percent to more than 80 percent over the same period. St. Jude has contributed to these breakthroughs. In 1996 St. Jude researcher Peter C. Doherty was co-winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine for work on the immune system. (Doherty now runs an eponymous institute in

Australia that is helping to develop two Covid-19 vaccines.) In 1983 St. Jude also became the first institution to successfully cure sickle cell anemia (a condition that largely strikes children of African descent) with a bone marrow transplant.

Thomas speaks with ease about the research; phrases like “the four types of medulloblastomas” roll off her tongue. (And yet, she has never played a doctor on TV.) Her eyes flash with excitement when talking about the hospital’s new proton beam, which is used on brain tumors in children. (“It’s the tiniest beam on the planet!”)

Just like her 16-year-old self, she seems energized by the cause.

When President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014, the inscription concluded with “Ms. Thomas inspires us all to dream bigger and reach higher.” At the ceremony Thomas’s thoughts turned to her grandparents. She imagined them arriving with their scant belongings, happy to be in a country that offered opportunity. “I tried not to weep, but the tears were coming down my face,” Thomas says. “I kept thinking, This is the possibility of America. This is why immigrants are so important. We must remember that.”

America gave Thomas’s grandparents hope, and in return her family has given so much hope to others. With vision, dedication, and generosity, maybe some lost causes aren’t so lost after all. “My brother and I say, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could turn St. Jude into a casino someday?’ ” she says, flashing one last gorgeous smile.

F E L L O W WA R R I O R S Andrew Kaczynski

C O U R T E SY A N D R E W K ACZ Y N S K I ( FA M I LY ) ; C O U R T E SY T E A M B E A N S ( H AT )

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hen their six-month-old daughter Francesca was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer over Labor Day weekend last year, Andrew Kaczynski and his wife Rachel Ensign used their journalistic acumen (he’s a reporter at CNN, she at the Wall Street Journal ) to gather as much information as possible about her disease. “It was literally like the worst reporting project ever,” Kaczynski says. They discovered that there were only four oncologists in the country who specialized in Francesca’s type of cancer, an aggressive tumor known as ATRT, and within a week of the pathology report they packed up and moved from Brooklyn to Boston, where their baby girl could begin treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. After a three-month battle, Francesca died on Christmas Eve. She was just nine months old.

“My mission in life has changed,” Kaczynski says. “When something traumatic like this happens to you, it makes you realign your priorities.”

While Francesca was in the hospital, he came up with a project called Team Beans (“Beans” was her nickname) and made T-shirts for friends and family.

It caught the attention of a woman who wanted to ride in Dana-Farber’s PMC Winter Cycle charity event in Francesca’s name. After their daughter’s death, Kaczynski and Ensign requested donations to the PMC challenge in lieu of gifts. “It went absolutely insane,” he says. The rider, Danielle Pourbaix, has raised more than $610,000 to date, all of which will go toward ATRT research at the hospital (the cycling event,

Rachel Ensign and Andrew Kaczynski with their daughter Francesca; Team Beans hat sales go to pediatric cancer research.

postponed due to the pandemic, will take place in June).

What started as a simple way to show support for baby Francesca has turned into a burgeoning grassroots movement. In March, to commemorate what would have been her first birthday, Kaczynski, with the help of his CNN colleagues, made Team Beans hats to sell via the network’s online store. They have so far raised $130,000. And every dollar counts. Because of the relative rarity of pediatric brain cancer—there are 5,000 cases a year, as opposed to breast cancer, which

affects more than 200,000—research and clinical trials in the field are vastly underfunded. Plus, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to invest in developing drugs for treatment.

Francesca’s parents were shocked to learn that there has never been a drug developed for pediatric brain cancer, ever. Their baby was receiving decades-old chemo treatments that had been developed for adult cancers.

It’s not just about the money. With Team Beans, Kaczynski is committed to raising awareness and informing legislation. “There are so many issues for childhood cancer,” he says. First, it’s getting a law passed called the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, which would redirect fines collected from pharmaceutical, cosmetic, medical device, and supplement companies that break the law to fund childhood cancer research at the National Institutes of Health.

Then it’s persuading landmarks to “go gold” for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which is September. He has already gotten Niagara Falls, Toronto’s CN Tower, and New York’s World Trade Center to honor the cause by changing their lights. At press time he was campaigning for the Empire State Building to get on board—activists have been trying to convince the skyscraper since 2014. “There are kids with cancer whose hospital rooms face the Empire State Building,” Kaczynski says. “It would mean so much to them just to see that people know they exist.” Leena Kim

FOR THE

LOVE OF THE

GAMES AT LONG LAST, IT’S TIME FOR ALL OF US, FROM BEGINNERS TO GOLD-MEDALISTS, TO GET BACK ON THE HORSE.

BY ALIX BROWNE ORIGINAL PAINTING BY HONOR TITUS

GOLDEN BELL A , 2021 Courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery, London/New York

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were at their highest and competitions were temporarily suspended.

She was, to use another horse metaphor, taking it all in stride.

“When I was riding this morning, I was thinking about how when I first started, I don’t think I even knew it was a competitive sport,” Polle told me. “This break is taking me back to a time when there was no goal. It was just about enjoying myself and enjoying the horses.”

That hasn’t changed. She still rides Wings every day. While there are countless show jumping competitions—such as the glamorous Saut Hermès and the star-studded Hampton Classic—the Olympics still remain the Dream. For Polle to sacrifice that Dream of competing together for the sake of her partner is the very definition of good horsemanship. “Sometimes when I’m walking the course, I have this surreal moment when I ask myself, How can horses actually jump this big?” Polle confessed. “The power you feel when they push off the ground and the way they use their bodies to stretch over the fence—that’s the best feeling for me.”

Not too long ago Polle posted a compilation video of Wings on Instagram. He has a famously big personality and, characteristically, he is creating a spectacle of himself in the footage. He bucks (and bucks, and bucks again for good measure). He rears. He spins in circles as if he were at a rodeo and not a world class grand prix. Through it all, Polle hangs tight, occasionally with her arms around his neck, and always with a huge smile on her face.

Rider and trainer Bill Steinkraus competed in five Olympics and rode for the U.S. for 22 years. In 1984 he was in the commentator’s booth with ABC’s Chris Schenkel. When Fargis stepped into the canter for his winning jump-off round, Steinkraus excused himself, saying that he was going to be watching with so much interest he didn’t think he would be able to talk. He was, no doubt, remembering his own gold medal win in Mexico City, in 1968. But one imagines that wasn’t the only sentiment behind this moment of silent awe.

“We must never forget, every time we sit on a horse, what an extraordinary privilege it is: to be able to unite one’s body with that of another sentient being, one that is stronger, faster, and more agile by far than we are, and at the same time brave, generous, and uncommonly forgiving,” Steinkraus wrote in his seminal book, Reflections on Riding and Jumping. “Only as riders can we achieve some measure of eternal youth, since we can exchange old, tired bodies for younger, more vigorous ones as easily as changing horses. The horse doesn’t know or care if you are a prince or a pauper, only whether you can ride with skill and justness.”

THE HOPEFULS As the U.S. Olympic teams begin making final selections, these athletes stand out.

N YJA H H U STON The 26-year-old skateboarding (a new Olympic sport this year) phenom has won 10 X Games gold medals.

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LU CY D ES L AU R IE RS Both her parents were grand prix riders.

At 21, she has already taken many of show jumping’s top prizes.

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B R A DY E L L I S O N The 32-year-old Olympian has won two team silver medals and an individual bronze in recurve archery.

SIMONE BILES No introduction necessary for this 24-year-old gymnast—her name has become synonymous with Olympic gold.

SHUTTERSTOCK (HUSTON); GETTY IMAGES (DESLAURIERS, ELLISON, BILES)

he most exhilarating moment in Olympic equestrian history, for the U.S. anyway, has to be the 1984 summer games in Los Angeles. The Americans, flush with both human and equine talent, brought the “Dream Team” to the show jumping competition, posting unprecedented double clear rounds and the lowest total number of faults since show jumping became an Olympic sport, in 1912. They not only took home the team gold medal for the first time but also the individual gold (Joe Fargis) and the silver (Conrad Homfeld).

Fargis and his mount, Touch of Class, an American thoroughbred affectionately known as Kitty around the barn, were an unlikely pair.

An imposing six-foot-two, Fargis is quiet and reserved. Kitty was a little pistol, and her diminutive height invited skepticism as to her ability to clear the obstacles that course designer—and the team’s legendary former coach—Bertalan de Némethy put in her path. The stands at Santa Anita Park held nearly 16,000 spectators. As Fargis and Kitty navigated the final combination of fences, it was so quiet you could hear, if not a pin drop, at least a lone voice shouting from the crowd, “Go, Joe!” Afterward, Fargis, with characteristic self-effacement, gave Kitty all the credit: “The horse went perfectly. I didn’t mess up. It was great.”

The Olympics have a way of absorbing the state of the world and reflecting it back to us on a human scale. Each athlete has a unique story. We find, in their triumphs and setbacks, metaphors for life: We raise the bar, cross the finish line, keep our eye on the ball.

This time around, the world has a collective story, too, and 2021 may go down as the year that all of us got back on the horse. After the agony of the pandemic, the thrill of the games, expected to kick off this July in Tokyo, will be in the hard-won victory of showing up, the pure joy of being able to play.

Equestrian Karen Polle, an Hermès Partner Rider, has had her sights on the Tokyo games since 2014, when she started competing for Japan. (Though she was raised in New York, she was born in Tokyo and holds dual citizenship.) Last spring she and With Wings, her horse of more than a decade, were the favorites for the Japanese team. Then Covid hit, and the games were postponed. And then Wings turned 18. When countries make their final team selections this June, Wings won’t be among them—Polle has decided to pull Wings from the rigors of competitive training. (Lucy Deslauriers, another Hermès Partner Rider, has been shortlisted by Team USA. See below.)

Upon hearing that heartbreaking piece of news, I recalled a conversation I had with Polle in the spring of 2020, when fear and uncertainty

T H E A R T I S T AT L E I S U R E The painter Honor Titus conjures the upcoming Olympics for Town & Country.

KINGSLEY IFILL/COURTESY TIMOTHY TAYLOR/LONDON AND NEW YORK (PORTRAIT); COURTESY TIMOTHY TAYLOR/LONDON AND NEW YORK (PAINTINGS)

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t would be tempting to describe 2021 as a breakout year for Honor Titus. The 31-year-old painter’s first solo show in New York City, “For Heaven’s Sake,” at Timothy Taylor Gallery from January to March, was one of the high points of the winter season. The entire collection, which included vibrant studies of figures at leisure, was quickly swept up by eager collectors.

In October the gallery will present new work by the artist in an equally anticipated show at Frieze London.

A good year, but Titus has already been through the business of blowing up, albeit in other genres. From 2011 to 2016 he fronted a Brooklyn-based punk band called Cerebral Ballzy, which made two well-received albums and played memorable high-octane gigs, including opening for bands like the Strokes and Flag. Back then he was also known around the city for his poetry readings and occasional stints as an actor and fashion model for Rag & Bone.

When he wasn’t on tour, Titus, whose father was one half of the 1990s rap duo Black Sheep, worked as a studio assistant for the artist Raymond Pettibon, which was when he began fine-tuning his own painting style. In 2016 he moved to Los Angeles and struck up a formative friendship with the painter Henry Taylor, whom he calls a mentor and at whose eponymous gallery he had a breakthrough show in 2020.

Titus brings a journalist’s eye to his work, including the painting he made for this issue of Town & Country (page 76) to accompany our story about the upcoming Olympics. “My intent was to capture the gallantry and grace of the equestrian world and the inherent love between horse and rider,” he says of Golden Bella. “With the five golden rings echoing the Olympic rings as well as victory, this painting allowed me to revel in a (somewhat) simple relationship while also alluding to bigger ideals like success, pride, and distinction.”

Details about Titus’s upcoming London show and other work can be found at TIMOTHYTAYLOR.COM. Norman Vanamee

Honor Titus’s recent show in New York City at Timothy Taylor Gallery featured oil-on-canvas paintings including Sock Hop (2020), above, and Clay Court (2020), right. The self-taught, Brooklyn-born artist, below, was photographed by the London-based artist Kingsley Ifill.

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The New Rules of During Wall Street’s most profitable run in years, some big fish got smoked, Silicon Valley saboteurs emerged as the ruling class, and the high-rollers hacking the market parked their overnight assets in the next Monaco.

Is history just repeating itself?

Leon in WINTER

Wealth makes its own morality, but has accountability finally caught up with the original masters of the universe? BY BOB IVRY iana Whitney was a Dartmouth College freshman in 1992 when a classmate raped her. Now, with daughters of her own, she’s the co-founder of a group determined to stop campus sexual violence.

One of its targets: Dartmouth’s Black Family Visual Arts Center, named for Leon Black, the billionaire alumnus and former Drexel Burnham Lambert banker, who for the past 30 years has been synonymous with Apollo Global Management, the sharpest elbows on Wall Street.

Through his charity, the Debra and Leon Black Family Foundation, Black chipped in $48 million toward the arts center, which opened in 2012. The only director the foundation had for years, besides the Blacks, was Jeffrey Epstein. The charity says he quit in 2007, but his name was listed on its tax forms as late as 2012.

Black was Epstein’s friend for more than two decades, and also his employer. From 2012 to 2017 he paid Epstein $158 million for advice on avoiding taxes, assistance Black acknowledges saved him as much as $2 billion. Before his death, prosecutors accused Epstein of operating a sex trafficking ring, including during the time of his friendship with Black, through which he raped or otherwise exploited girls as young as 14, “often on a daily basis.” Black says he was completely unaware of this “abhorrent misconduct,” that his relationship with Epstein was a grievous error, and that he deeply regrets it.

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“Black gave Epstein $158 million, which bankrolled his empire of sexually abusing girls,” Whitney says. “For Dartmouth, associating with the Black name shows a willful disregard for Epstein’s victims.”

Condemnation of his philanthropy must come as a shock to the 69-year-old Black, who through a spokesperson declined to speak to T&C. He watched his friend and former Drexel colleague Michael Milken rehabilitate his own reputation by giving away gobs of his fortune. Now, after years of devising jackpots for himself without facing anywhere near the same level of scrutiny, Black is discovering that Milken’s model of contrition may be enough for the crime of insider trading but that association with a sex offender is much tougher to overcome. His protestations of innocence seem to have fallen on skeptical ears or, worse, been ignored. He stepped down from his leadership roles at Apollo and agreed, under pressure, to give up his chairmanship of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. At a time of generational change in the financial industry, the stench of scandal, followed by more recent allegations that Black bullied a former sex partner and paid her to keep quiet, was enough to topple a man worth $10 billion, give or take a truckload. Thirty-five years after Black, Milken, and the merry band of Drexel pirates ushered in a new, more aggressive Wall Street, buccaneers from the tech world are shoving out the old money with obscurely named cryptocurrencies, $86 billion initial public offerings, and contrarian

B E T T M A N N A R C H I V E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( M I L K E N ) ; PAT R I C K T. FA L L O N / B L O O M B E R G / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( B L A C K ) ; Y V O N N E H E M S E Y / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( L E V I N E ) ; R O N GA L E L L A LT D. / R O N GA L E L L A C O L L E CT I O N / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( B O E S K Y ) ; M I I K K A S K A F FA R I / G E T T Y I M A G E S F O R B R E A K T H R O U G H P R I Z E ( T E N E V ) ; D I M I T R I O S K A M B O U R I S / G E T T Y I M A G E S F O R AT & T ( C U B A N ) ; BRIT TA PEDERSEN/POOL/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES (MUSK); MICHAEL SHORT/BLOOMBERG/GET T Y IMAGES (ARMSTRONG); GET T Y IMAGES (BOOK, NUMBERS, $100 BILLS)

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Class of ’21, take note: Money can’t fix everything. Black has embarked on at least one Milkenesque act of atonement, beginning to distribute the $200 million he pledged in the wake of the Epstein allegations to causes that support gender equality and the protection and empowerment of women. The money could be a sledgehammer against exploitation. Given the nature of the sin, however, it smacks of purchasing an indulgence. And if Epstein saved him $2 billion, why not promise that much?

Buying back social acceptance on markdown isn’t part of the Milken blueprint.

It’s more in line with the lessons that years of success on Wall Street can teach: Greed is good, bullying works, rules are for suckers, taxes are for the little people, promises are just puffs of air, and, if you have to risk money, make sure it’s someone else’s.

Money makes its own morality. That’s the legacy of a Drexel Burnham Lambert education.

everyone else called them assholes.

Drexel executives were known to be so dismissive of the finance industry’s unwritten patrician canons that it was said they called their customers just to bad-mouth competitors. Instead of the usual clubbiness that mandated some degree of collegiality when it came to sharing underwriting fees, Drexel did what it could to keep rivals away from their bond deals. And when they had to split the underwriting, they supposedly invited salesmen from the other firms to join them in pitching prospective buyers—but gave them the wrong locations.

“Drexel did things I never heard of anyone doing before,” says Martin Fridson, who dealt with the firm back in the day and is now chief investment officer at Lehmann, Livian, Fridson Advisors. “They were despised for being smart and successful,” says author Jesse Kornbluth, who chronicled Drexel’s undoing at the end of the decade. “They lived in a bubble and they didn’t know, or care, that they were despised.”

And then there was Milken, their ringleader, who knew every bond in the market, who owned it, and at what price. He and his punk rock wrecking crew became famous for peddling high-risk debt—junk bonds—to pay for hostile corporate buyouts, which they sometimes launched without having the funding in place. Black, then a young banker nicknamed “Pizza the Hut” because his anxiety during negotiations drove him to eat nonstop, concocted an epic innovation that took care of that problem, with the bonus of bringing the blood of their rivals to a boil: the “highly confident” letter, which basically said, Hey, we don’t have the money to crush this company, but we’ll get it.

The letter had no legal standing and was based purely on the market’s belief that Milken could raise any amount for any reason. And on that sweet bed of nothing, and only that sweet bed of nothing, Drexel and its allies were able to lay waste to corporate America.

The result: Companies focused on short-term gains. If they didn’t, one of Drexel’s buyout bandits could orchestrate a takeover or squeeze them. The recent epidemic of corporate stock buybacks, which enrich shareholders and the C-suite by making quarterly numbers sparkle but do nothing to boost productivity, is the progeny of this ’80s fear campaign.

A descendant of the highly confident letter exists today in Silicon Valley. Many unprofitable startups owe their fortunes to incubators, venture investors, and Wall Street financiers, without whose stamp of approval they would wither and die.

Drexel amassed a lot of enemies, so it was no surprise when its end came—swiftly and with enough schadenfreude to stretch into this century. The firm was so dependent on hostile buyouts that when they fell out of fashion, so did Drexel.

Most infamously, Milken and Dennis Levine, Black’s colleague on the mergers and acquisitions desk, went to prison for insider trading, as did their co-conspirator, the arbitrageur Ivan Boesky. Black was never implicated. By 1990 Drexel was in bankruptcy.

Today Drexel alumni provide a direct link to those heady days when a tougher financial industry was rising. Many of them have hung out their own shingles, using their slide rules to calculate profit and loss while the [CONTIN UE D O N PAGE 10 0]

BONFIRE OF THE BUYOUT BANDITS Tom Wolfe may have described guys like those at Drexel in the deregulated, cocaine-fueled 1980s as “masters of the universe,” but almost

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION For valedictorians like these, a diploma from the school of Drexel is far from a scarlet letter—it’s a badge of honor.

David Solomon Goldman’s CEO, a Milken acolyte, was roasted for DJing a Hamptons concert at the height of the pandemic.

Gary Winnick The former Milken partner led the telecom giant Global Crossing until its splashy collapse in the early 2000s.

Richard Handler The Jefferies chief is at war with former investors over a SPAC that belly-flopped.

Stephen Feinberg Billionaire boss of Cerberus Capital, which somehow bankrupted 204-year-old weapons maker Remington.

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO (PAGES); JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED (SOLOMON); ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES (WINNICK); PETER FOLEY/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES (HANDLER); JAHI CHIKWENDIU/WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES (FEINBERG)

“The Drexel people got away with a lot.

Now I hope they’re thinking they can’t do that anymore.”

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO (FILMSTRIP); 20TH CENTURY FOX/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK (WALL STREET); WARNER BROS./GETTY IMAGES (BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES); LIONSGATE/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK (AMERICAN PSYCHO)

The go-go ’80s were immortalized on the big screen.

Now, five movies and two TV shows are on the way about the GameStop sensation.

Barbarians at the Gate…AGAIN?

Finance’s ancien régime emerged from the GameStop frenzy unscathed, give or take a few billion, but they were put on notice by a new breed of Wall Street buccaneer.

BY EMILY STEWART

t’s a tale as old as time in business: One group of aggressive interlopers targets another group, and they fight it out. One comes out ahead; the other gets run over. Historically, however, one of the groups isn’t a loose amalgamation of strangers on the internet, nor is it led into battle in part by a pied piper who calls himself Roaring Kitty and streams investment hot takes from his basement.

“We’re being shown the tendies by Mr. Market,” said Roaring Kitty, whose real name is Keith Gill, on YouTube while celebrating GameStop, the video game retailer, reaching a market cap of $2 billion in mid-January. “Tendies” is internet-speak for market winnings worth savoring, like chicken tenders, which Gill just happened to have on hand to land his joke. He pulled a tender into the frame,

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staring almost earnestly into the camera, brandished the morsel, and asked his anonymous audience, “Can you dip it in champagne?”

The young troublemaker, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Cousin Greg on Succession, was one of the supporting players in a saga that took Wall Street by storm at the start of 2021. He was among the horde of traders, many of whom organized on the WallStreetBets forum of the social media platform Reddit, who helped drive a spectacular—albeit fleeting—rise in the price of so-called meme stocks, companies like the now infamous GameStop, BlackBerry, and others considered by most investors to be on the decline.

In the process they cost some big names big dollars, like New York Mets owner Steve Cohen and his hedge fund, Point72; Cohen’s former acolyte Gabe Plotkin, of the hedge fund Melvin Capital; and TOW N AN D C OU NT RY MAG . CO M | SU M M ER 2 02 1

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HISTORY’S FIRST BUBBLE During the 17th century, the Dutch economy— one of the most complex in the world at the time—was so consumed with tulip fever that the Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Younger portrayed traders as avaricious monkeys in a famous satiric painting. That was one of the first overheated markets, but it wouldn’t be the last. Centuries later would come the Roaring ’20s, the 1980s Wall Street boom, the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, and

Wall Street’s pet peeve: the pied piper behind GameStop’s $2 billion rally, an investor and former broker named Keith Gill who goes by the handle Roaring Kitty on Twitter (and DeepFuckingValue on Reddit).

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the financial crash of the late aughts.

There have always been those who were able to take advantage of such moments of turmoil. The ’80s saw the rise of corporate sharks such as Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens and the proliferation of hostile takeovers and displays of ruthless capitalism, such as Henry Kravis’s epic battle for control of RJR Nabisco. Hedge fund manager Michael Burry foresaw the subprime mortgage crisis before it happened and profited handsomely. (Incidentally, he invested in and made money on the GameStop craze as well.) Indeed, much of what’s happening today is reminiscent of the 1990s: Reddit is the new chat board, free trading is the new cheap trading, and investment ideas are equally risky—even reckless. “Everything old is new again,” says Barry Ritholtz, CIO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and a well-known Wall Street pundit.

Recent circumstances have exacerbated matters. Robinhood, the sevenyear-old startup whose 13 million day traders turbocharged the GameStop frenzy, isn’t just free, it’s like Candy Crush: It makes investing feel like gaming. Locked down in their homes due to the pandemic, bored people were playing stocks, and thanks to stimulus checks some had more money to do it with. Analysts estimate that billions of dollars from stimulus checks (“stimmies,” as the online crowd calls them) flowed into the market. Technology made it easy for all this money to move fast, and traders were hungry for ideas, the kind that weren’t being shared at two-martini lunches at the Capital Grille or happy hour at the 21 Club, but instead by strangers gathering critical mass on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok. Investors have always sought information, says Divya Narendra, the founder and CEO of SumZero, a closed social network for investors.

What’s notable is where many of them are now looking. “They all value the wisdom of crowds,” Narendra says, “so the question then becomes, which crowd do you value, or do you just value any crowd?”

Wall Street paid attention to this growing crop of small-time day traders but considered their activities little more than a bit of noise from the wildlings beyond the Wall. That may still be true, but in the words of one insider at a major hedge fund, the “obnoxious” noise has proven worth listening to a bit more closely.

PAVLO GONCHAR/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET/GETTY IMAGES (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION); GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO (CAT)

Daniel Sundheim, whose D1 Capital Partners was one of the top performers of 2020. They had been short-selling GameStop stock, and they were down billions of dollars by the end of January, victims of a short squeeze that forced them to participate in their own unraveling, largely at the hands of people in tax brackets far below theirs.

Wall Street’s potentates are used to going after one another— or being insurrectionists themselves.

The savvier ones are students of history, and they remember that market manias, speculative bubbles, and short squeezes have been around for centuries. But every now and then even captains of industry get taken by surprise, and lately they’ve been kept on their toes by a barrage of novel financial vehicles and the arriviste investors driving up their value.

Between cryptocurrencies, special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)— Christie’s sold a piece of digital art for $69.3 million in March—crazy money has entered an unprecedented phase.

This has unnerved many veteran corporate raiders and ancien régime high rollers, some of whom recall earlier periods of upheaval but can’t recognize the current cohort of underground instigators, who do most of their plotting online. One thing is undeniable: The Davids have figured out how to rig parts of the game in their favor, and the Goliaths have to learn some of the new rules.

“These guys thought that retail was stupid, and they were happy to be on the other side of retail, and, actually, they got smoked,” says Benn Eifert, chief investment officer of QVR Advisors, a boutique hedge fund.

On the surface it’s hard to take a forum like WallStreetBets seriously. Its users call themselves “degenerates” and use crude and often homophobic terms. They post strings of rocket emojis signaling that they want to send a stock “to the moon” and talk about “YOLO-ing” into positions when they go all in. They are mostly young and male, and they’re at war with the so-called suits: the Wall Street Brahmins they believe have been shilling them bad investment products for years and manipulating the markets against them. And even though not all of them know what they’re doing, it appears enough of them may.

“Pretty smart people were behind the short squeeze, and they may not wear a suit and tie to work every day and have Goldman Sachs on their résumés, but they were no market idiots,” says David Bahnsen, managing partner and CIO of the Bahnsen Group, a private wealth management firm.

In one video Roaring Kitty laid out part of his investment thesis for GameStop: “Many think it’s a foolish investment. But everyone’s wrong. It’s like the big short again, or more like the big short squeeze this time, right?”

That video was posted back in August 2020. Gill is no dummy; the thirtysomething father, who posts as DeepFuckingValue on Reddit, was a registered broker and used to work for a Boston-based insurance company.

LET THEM EAT “TENDIES”

was taking a break from Twitter. A couple of days after changing his Twitter bio to #bitcoin, Musk said he would take a hiatus from the platform too. Citron Research, run by famous short-seller Andrew Left, said it would stop publishing research reports about its short corporate targets, bringing to an end a practice it has undertaken for two decades. “The environment is aggressive and angry right now,” Left says, noting that some traders targeted him and his family. “What I don’t like about it is the meanness of it all. If this is the new way, let them have it.”

REVENGE OF THE REDDITORS The funds that were betting big parts of their portfolios against GameStop were out on a limb—a limb many on Wall Street acknowledge, privately and publicly, they weren’t wise to be on. They were used to being a one-man mob going after companies, and they missed the smaller guys coming after them.

“These people were hoisted on their own petard,” Ritholtz says.

“The Redditors basically said, ‘Oh, so you think you can go on TV and push a narrative and a meme and drive this down? Well, let us show you how the meme game is played.’ ” Though retail traders aren’t a monolith, it’s fair to say that the GameStop boom wasn’t based on the stock’s fundamentals. It was spun from a more visceral place, a collision of emotions and egos, technology and culture, nostalgia and anger, all magnified in a place prone to hyperbole: the internet. Many of the names investors favored are relics of the recent past, like the retailer Express and AMC theaters. For the little guys it felt good to try to stick it to the honchos actively rooting against the mall store they remember going to as teenagers, or the movie theater under siege during the pandemic. The Reddit crowd favors overblown responses that can prove nihilistic at times.

On January 31 the moderators of WallStreetBets posted a “State of the Union” message, since removed, that marveled at what had transpired. “Could you imagine two weeks ago a crusade was brewing, that several million traders would soon band together to fire one big shot across the bow of some the most powerful entities in the world. How could you have?” they wrote.

The emotions go both ways. Some on Wall Street bristle at the idea of this pesky, chaotic group of anonymous hooligans pushing stocks around. “There’s nothing very serious people dislike more than the unwashed masses getting rich, and doing it for lesser intellectual reasons,” one trader says.

“The foolishness always comes to an end, and it almost always ends badly for a majority of retail investors. It’s not rich versus poor. It’s smart versus dumb.”

When a hedge fund shorts a stock, it’s betting that the price will go down. It borrows shares of the stock, sells those shares, and, if all goes well, buys them back when the price plummets. Then it returns them and pockets the difference.

If the price goes up, cue the red siren emoji. At some point the hedge fund has to buy the shares back to return them, and doing that drives the price up more—hence the squeeze. The potential losses are essentially infinite.

“What we saw with GameStop is simply what every short seller has to deal with,” says Fahmi Quadir, chief investment officer at Safkhet Capital, a short-only fund. “Positions go against you. Most of the time the market is going up; most securities are always going up. Why this became such a widely discussed phenomenon has to do with the wrong people being on the other side of the trade.” In other words, the suits would prefer to keep the right to be ruthless to themselves.

GameStop’s stock closed the first trading day of 2021 at $17.25 per share. During the third week of January, at its peak, the company traded as high as $483, its price swinging so wildly that the New York Stock Exchange had to pause trading on it multiple times on two consecutive days. Redditors were egged on by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, and Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya. There were rich-guy agitators, but there were also plenty of rich guys agitated.

One fund shorting GameStop, Plotkin’s Melvin Capital, found its investments down by more than 50 percent at the end of January, according to the Wall Street Journal. Cohen’s Point72 and Kenneth Griffin’s hedge fund, Citadel, stepped in to provide $2.75 billion in emergency funds to Melvin amid the chaos. After getting trolled online over the bailout, including by some Mets fans, Cohen announced he

APRES LE MEME STOCK, LE DELUGE This story is not a linear one. The New York–based hedge fund Senvest Management, which bought into GameStop last September, made $700 million off the January brouhaha. The hedge fund Citadel reportedly lost a smidgen of its $2 billion investment in Melvin Capital in January, but Citadel Securities, which processes trades for Robinhood, profited nicely off the day-trading boom. The two Citadels are managed separately, but they are majority-owned by [CO NT INUE D ON PAG E 1 01] TOW N AN D C OU NT RY MAG . CO M | SU M M ER 2 02 1

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Next Stop, THE NEW MONACO How cryptocrats, fin-techpreneurs, and the latest titans of industry are changing Miami into a sunny place for shady people. BY HORACIO SILVA

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last October and paid $42 million for a waterfront mansion once owned by Alex Rodriguez. “I was ready for a change,” Oringer adds, “and once Covid struck, it became clear to me that we can now work anywhere and collaborate with anyone, regardless of where they live.”

He and the entrepreneur Edward Lando set up a new investment concern called Pareto Holdings to incubate new companies with the goal of building a unicorn (a billion-dollar business) over the next few years. And they’re not alone: The troubled Japanese conglomerate (and early WeWork backer) SoftBank set aside $100 million for new ventures in the area, and Blackstone Group relocated its tech division to downtown Miami, where Apollo Global Management, Citadel, and Goldman Sachs are also reportedly scoping out office space.

PALO ALTO ON THE BEACH It’s not the first time the city has attempted to become a Speedowearing alternative to Silicon Valley. In the mid- to late ’90s, a slew of vainglorious startups raised millions of dollars and plastered the beach with billboards. But despite the early fanfare there were few

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO (GLASSES WITH TREES)

wo years ago Demian Bellumio, a Miami-based investor, was a recent divorcé with a less than full dance card, so he decided to create a WhatsApp group for the city’s budding tech scene.

“I’ve always loved being a connector,” he says,“and there were new people in Miami, so I arranged for us all to occasionally get together to sail, fish, have dinner. It was all very organic and low-key.”

Low-key? In Miami? Good luck. In the time since, this Southern capital of sea, sun, and sin has mushroomed, with a conga line of rainmakers lured by the city’s seductive mix of year-round sunshine, permissive coronavirus safety guidelines, scantily clad locals, and skimpy taxes, not to mention the efforts of Mayor Francis Suarez, whose open-armed cajoling is reminiscent of a spruiker outside a strip club.

“I’ve been working in tech for more than 20 years,” Bellumio says, “and I’ve never seen anything like the last six months.” The list of wellknown newcomers fighting over Tesla chargers and tables at hotspots like Carbone and Swan includes Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal who recently paid $18 million for two adjacent mansions in the Venetian Islands; Keith Rabois, the startup investor and Thiel’s partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund, who paid $29 million for a nearby mansion; Jack Abraham, the precocious CEO behind VC powerhouse Atomic; Shervin Pishevar, an early investor in Uber and Airbnb; Blumberg Capital founder David Blumberg; and Uber’s former chief business officer Emil Michael.

And if some of these transplanted bros are a little too taken by the city’s temptations, so be it. “I’m not going to pass judgment,” says Mera Rubell, an influential art collector who, along with her husband Don, infamously opened a gallery in 1993 on the site of a former DEA warehouse. “Maybe they can go to the museums in the day and the clubs at night. I assure you Miami will embrace these people with open arms. Money talks, nobody walks.”

“Miami today reminds me of New York 20 years ago,” says Jon Oringer, the deep-pocketed founder of the stock media company Shutterstock, who moved from New York

wins to boast of. Alienware, the gaming PC maker founded in 1996 by childhood friends Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila, was acquired

by Dell in 2006 for an undisclosed amount, and Terremark Worldwide became one of the city’s first unicorns when it was sold to Verizon for $1.4 billion in 2011. But with the exception of Chewy, the pet food e-tailer based in nearby Broward County that was acquired in 2017 by PetSmart for $3.35 billion, success stories in the intervening years have been as rare as an available poolside cabana at the Four Seasons on a summer afternoon.

The infrastructure was simply not in place. “It was impossible to get anything done here,” says Martin Varsavsky, an Argentine tech entrepreneur who specializes in health and telecommunications. Varsavsky lived in Miami for three years starting in 2014, but he found the experience frustrat— Mera ing and eventually decamped for Europe.

“Forget that there was no serious investment in tech here. It was hard to find anyone reliable to even build an office, and the most talented people in South Florida had left for the Northeast and California,” he says.

Then last year he returned, splitting his time between Miami and Madrid. The seismic shift for him and others—VCs from California, fund managers from New York, and entrepreneurs from all over—can be attributed in part to the city’s diablo-may-care, business-as-usual approach during Covid. “It has been remarkable,” Varsavsky says.

REDEMPTION FOR THE RADIOACTIVE? At a time when the titans of tech and their overreach are viewed by the public as being on par with the robber barons of yore, not everyone will be surprised by the wholesale southern migration.

After all, Miami has always been a sunny place for shady people. But Crockett and Tubbs checked out long ago, and with the exception of Dave Portnoy, the millionaire creator of Barstool Sports who was recently involved in a sex tape scandal, the most outrageous behavior is perpetrated by out-of-control spring breakers.

“You know that people are serious about Miami when they move their families here,” says Jackie Soffer, art collector and CEO of real estate giant Turnberry Associates.

“There are a lot of applications for the top schools, like Ransom Everglades, Miami Country Day, and Gulliver Prep, and of Rubell course Avenues is opening up.”

Besides, with people questioning where they work from and also what they work on, don’t be surprised if Miami reinvents itself not as a safe harbor for strung-out debauchees but as a place for redeeming second acts—a tech utopia of sorts.

“Some people have this sense of guilt about what’s going on with society because of these technologies and what they’re doing to the world,” Bellumio says with the wide-eyed sincerity that informed his networking group, now dubbed Miami Tech Life. “And these people are actually trying to figure things out from here, and see if they can build a better world.”

To that end, Bellumio says his new venture is a tech company, Nue Life Health, which focuses on wellness and mental health and leverages artificial intelligence and psychedelics. (At last!) Others, like the venture capitalist Jack Abraham, are trying to make a difference in more conventional ways, like actively investing in startups intent on righting the world’s wrongs.

Not everyone is convinced. “I imagine some people think like that,” Varsavsky says,“but most of them will continue to do exactly the same work as before, but from here. I don’t think people are moving here and saying, ‘Now I’m someone else.’ ” Here’s hoping the AI gets the dosage right on those psychedelics.

GETTY IMAGES/EYEEM (MONEY)

“Miami will embrace these people with open arms. Money talks, nobody walks.”

Four words explain why the asset class—Peter Thiel, Apollo, Goldman, et al.—is eyeing this city of sin and sun: no state income tax.

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G IR L L A N D First on the playlist, this deep cut from Marlo Thomas’s beloved children’s album, which turns 50 next year: “There’s fun for all/From eight to 80.”

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YOU AND ME

Play this classic, turn up the volume, and dance to the beat of your own drum. Our soundtrack to summer fashion starts here.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALYONA KUZMINA STYLED BY DANIA LUCERO ORTIZ

LU C KY STA R A summertime mixtape would be incomplete without Madonna: “Starlight, star bright/Make everything all right.”

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I S N ’ T S H E LOV E LY Bask in the outdoors, and in Stevie Wonder’s immortal Songs in the Key of Life: “Isn’t she lovely?/Life and love are the same.”

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T HO SE L A Z Y H A Z Y CR A Z Y DAYS OF SUMMER Follow Nat King Cole’s advice: “Dust off the sun and moon/And sing a song of cheer.”

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C RU E L S U MM E R Bananarama knew all about August doldrums in the city: “It’s too hot to handle/So I got to get up and go.” So do, and head to Art Omi in the Hudson Valley, where this story was photographed. ARTOMI.ORG MOLLY GODDARD DRESS ($2,470); ISA TAPIA SANDALS ($295); LOREN NICOLE NECKLACE ($42,750); TAMARA COMOLLI BANGLES (FROM $7,060); SIG WARD RINGS (FROM $3,656); MIU MIU HANDBAG ($2,550). FOR DETAILS SEE PAGE 101

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MS. ROCKEFELLER, HOW DOES YOUR CANNABIS GROW?

Once upon a time, a forward-thinking heiress met an eager younger farmer who persuaded her to grow 10 acres of magical plants on her upstate New York farm.

A modern-day fairy tale?

Nope. Just a plan to save the planet and feel pretty darn relaxed while doing it.

BY LISA GABOR

SARA WALLACH (HEMP); GETTY IMAGES (FRAME)

A mature crop of Cannabis sativa ready for harvest by Hudson Hemp, on an upstate New York farm owned by Abby Rockefeller.

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t all started in 2013, at the end of a dirt track in a rural section of New York’s Hudson Valley where a humble white farmhouse stands among a few colonial-red barns. Old Mud Creek Farm, as it’s called, had been put up for sale by the agrochemical giant Syngenta, which had used the 386-acre property for years to test products—fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides—on corn and soy crops. Nothing remarkable, just another tract of heavily used industrial farmland in a region where people have been rushing to get out of the industrial farming business.

Who would buy such a place?

Abby Rockefeller, the septuagenarian daughter of the late David and Peggy Rockefeller, sent her farm manager, thirtysomething Ben Dobson, to negotiate a price. She and Dobson are now co-founders of Hudson Carbon and Hudson Hemp, two startups with a joint mission to: research and promote regenerative organic agriculture and carbon sequestration; farm hemp; perform complex botanical extractions; and, along the way, make and sell an exquisite line of CBD-infused wellness products called Treaty. Old Mud Creek’s “depleted, dead” soil, as they call it, was exactly what the two were after.

The farm is located in the town of Livingston, a twohour drive north of New York City, and it borders a much larger property, Stone House Farm, which Rockefeller and her siblings inherited from their parents and still oversee today through a foundation. Rockefeller had long had her eye on the smaller place. “A beautiful piece of land,” she told me during a Zoom call this spring. “It’s called Old Mud Creek not because the water is muddy but because the bottom is muddy.” She had wondered if there might be a way to transition the land from conventional to organic farming and simultaneously gather scientifically useful data on chemical and carbon changes in the soil. It sounded straightforward, but she would soon learn it had never been done before, not in the detail she imagined.

She and Dobson met through her son Christopher Lindstrom, who attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock with Dobson two decades ago. “ ‘You have to get Ben!’” Rockefeller recalled her son telling her when she began to hatch her newest environmental initiative. Rockefeller has bright eyes and wavy gray hair that falls past her shoulders.

“He practically yelled, ‘Ben Dobson is an amazing farmer!’ ” Dobson is an amazing farmer. He can grow anything anywhere—a fact that does not come as a surprise to anyone who knows his background.

His parents are Anne Banks and Ted Dobson, early pioneers and stars

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of the organic food movement. He was born and raised on a farm right down the road, in Hillsdale, and he has worked in organic agriculture, in one form or another, pretty much his whole life.

Rockefeller bought Old Mud Creek Farm, and in 2016 Hudson Carbon began a partnership with Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. A team of scientists from the Massachusetts-based research institute descended on the farm to set up observation equipment.

The question they hope to answer at the end of the experiment: Can regenerative agriculture positively affect climate change and, executed at scale, even contribute to its reversal? e’ll have Hemp Kush. Electra. Lifter. CBG White. Cherry Wine. And…we love our Sour Space Candy!” Dobson was shouting to be heard above the growl of his truck as it bounced along a dirt road during a recent visit to Old Mud Creek Farm. He wanted to show me the fields and tell me the names of the hemp varietals he planned to plant in contour-based patterns. “It’s indica crossed with sativa!” he said of one variety’s unique attributes. Stretching out a long arm, he pointed to a section of field where he will rotate hemp with “wildflowers mixed with perennial grasses and legumes,” crops he says are “vital to the land and to our business.”

As executive director of Hudson Carbon and CEO of Hudson Hemp, Dobson oversees day-to-day operations, but he is in constant contact with Rockefeller.

“She and I both feel the need to rescale agriculture and how people think about the environment,” he said.

“That means moving from industrialized farming— with its focus on the use of synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides—back to smaller family-run farms growing food for their communities.” The parallel goal of promoting regenerative agriculture, he says, is creating richer farmland and conditions whereby more CO2 is converted into soil carbon than is released into the atmosphere.

It was Dobson who suggested planting hemp, Rockefeller said on our Zoom call. He explained that it’s considered a bioremediating plant, which means that as it grows—vigorously and with very large root systems—it cleans heavy metals from the soil and brings carbon back into the soil. In 2017 Dobson secured the 10th permit ever issued in the state of New York to grow hemp and promptly planted 10 acres of it. In 2018 he and Rockefeller tripled that amount, stepped up research on its beneficial properties, and went deep into development of the Treaty CBD brand and products. They also ordered

“W

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SARA WALLACH (HEMP); GETTY IMAGES (FRAME)

“We’ll have Hemp Kush. Electra.

Lifter. CBG White.

Cherry Wine. And we love our Sour Space Candy!”

processing equipment from California and Germany and built a state-of-the-art facility in one of their barns to extract CBD (and soon, perhaps, THC).

“The hemp has been diverse and exciting,” Rockefeller said. “A good crop for so many things. I didn’t know about its potential as a building material.” Rockefeller has been supporting and launching environmental initiatives for most of her adult life, and she said she likes to try new things. She was an early advocate in the fight against water pollution caused by sewage being dumped into the nation’s water supply. A 2005 article in the Chicago Tribune noted, “Abby Rockefeller, a descendant of John D., was the first American to install a composting system in her home in Cambridge, Mass. By 1973, she had founded Clivus Multrum, which remains the largest distributor of composting toilets for public use in North America.” That company is still going strong 50 years later, even though, Rockefeller said, “I was not at all a talented promoter of it.”

Marketing has not been an issue with this latest venture. “We’ve really enjoyed using excitement around the hemp,” Dobson told me with a smile.“It gets people’s attention.” During their first planting season, passersby— including a local sheriff— would pull over and get out of their cars to stare at the fields of plants, which look a lot like ones people used to try desperately to hide from public view. “By bringing it to the farm with the carbon project, we’ve had this beautiful opportunity to display how it fit together as part of a new vision for regenerative agriculture.”

DANIEL DORSA (FARM); GETTY IMAGES (FRAME)

During the first planting season, passersby—including a local sheriff—would get out of their cars to stare at the fields of cannabis.

ndustrial hemp and psychoactive marijuana come from subvarieties of the cannabis plant. They look similar, but according to federal law, hemp must have less than 0.3 percent THC (the substance that produces pot’s high). Selling or growing either was long illegal in the United States, but in 2018 Congress passed a farm bill that made it legal in all 50 states to cultivate hemp and in many states to produce CBD, a non-psychoactive chemical compound that can be extracted from the plant (some states, including New York, had already enacted similar laws). The new legislation sparked an agricultural boom, with most growers focusing on producing crops to make CBD. In less than three years it has become a major industry. In the United States alone, CBD-infused products— from lotions and tinctures to drinks and edibles—generated $14.9 billion in 2020, according to New Frontier Data, an industry research firm. By 2025 it predicts that number will grow to $26.4 billion.

As for hemp’s “hot” cousin, 48 states now allow some form of

I

medical and/or adult use. Earlier this year New York state passed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, which legalized its production and distribution (using the drug was decriminalized in 2019).

Up to this point, Dobson and Rockefeller have concentrated on cultivating hemp, which they sell in bulk, along with extracted CBD. They also use wildflowers and botanicals they grow, along with the hemp, to make the Treaty line of wellness products, which they sell through the brand’s website and to retail stores across the country. This part of the business is overseen by Dobson’s younger sisters, Melany and Freya. The farm’s growing practices and regeneration of living soil, they told me during a recent visit, make their offerings different from the thousands of other CBD products that have been introduced by brands, big and small, in recent years. “The health of the earth translates to the health of the individual in a very literal way,” Melany said.

They enlisted a top psychopharmacology researcher with the International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute to help create four ingestible CBD formulations, called Balance, Calm, Focus, and Recover.

They concentrated on the origin of ingredients (native to the Hudson Valley) and the precision of the formulas (many “infused” products don’t provide information about how much CBD is in them; Treaty lists it to the milliliter).

“The hemp market has been through a green rush and a crash,” Ian Laird, co-founder of Hemp Benchmarks, a company that provides industry data for cannabis markets, told me recently. “I would guess 90 percent of the farmers have lost money.” Rockefeller and Dobson consulted with Laird when they started out, and he remains familiar with their business model.

“Hudson Hemp is something different, more akin to craft production.” He says their focus on regenerative agriculture and carbon sequestration could serve them well if they decide to expand their offerings. “Hudson Hemp is really well positioned to be a source of high-quality, certified organic cannabis.”

Although he and Rockefeller have not formalized a plan, Dobson told me, they do see Treaty becoming both a CBD and THC cannabis brand. “It will have to be differentiated from mainstream, corporate companies, and focus on so much more than just THC.” Wind was whipping across the fields as we spoke, but Dobson was determined to show me the location for the new greenhouse frame and compost pile. “The future is about pairing cannabinoids with medicinal plants, herbs, and wildflowers—on farms just like this.”

TREATY’S LINE OF CBD PRODUCTS CAN BE FOUND AT OURTREATY.COM

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LEON IN WINTER exciting deals are done by machine. Meanwhile, companies such as Coinbase (whose valuation skyrocketed to $86 billion during its stock market debut in April), WeWork, and Robinhood rise and fall with every news cycle, their deals (and humiliations) riveting the business press, Reddit forums, and the public in a way that not even Drexel’s junk bond bacchanal could ever do.

That’s not to say the Drexel alums have steered clear of their own mortifying moments.

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 82]

VANISHED FROM OLYMPUS And then there’s Leon Black. He co-founded Apollo in 1990, a few months after Drexel went kaput. Named after Zeus’s fuzzy-cheeked favorite, Apollo helped develop a model that ensures that private equity firms make money even when nobody else does. It’s based on sleight of hand: A firm borrows money to buy a company, but instead of taking the debt onto its own books, repayment becomes the responsibility of the acquired company. The executives often keep borrowing to pay themselves more. Debt piles up, and despite job cuts and other expense reductions, many conquered companies buckle under the weight.

In just the last few years, Apollo has overseen the bankruptcies of portfolio companies EP Energy, Chisholm Oil & Gas, Claire’s, Hexion Holdings, and Chuck E. Cheese. Apollo says these failures were caused by “secular issues” and not mismanagement. Black argues that this modus operandi benefits pension funds and the public employee retirement accounts that supply the seed money for private equity. For the most part, those do well.

But many workers pay dearly. And there have been shenanigans. Five years ago a bankruptcy judge scolded Apollo executives for selling off the better assets of casino operator Caesars Entertainment, sometimes to themselves, and leaving the dregs for creditors.

Buying and selling companies has become a smaller part of Apollo’s business, comprising roughly $80 billion of the firm’s $455 billion in assets. Credit has taken over, with $350 billion under management. That’s because after 100

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the 2008 financial crisis traditional lenders got skittish, but Black was shrewd enough to seize the opportunity and step in where banks wouldn’t, turning Apollo into one of the global leaders in so-called shadow banking. Through low-key subsidiaries like MidCap Financial, the firm moved into more and more corners of American life, such as lending to grocery stores and nursing homes.

In January 2022 Apollo is expected to finalize an $11 billion tie-up with the insurance company Athene, ensuring a steady flow of capital from customers’ premiums into its coffers and the expansion of Apollo’s influence writ large. The deal sets the financial behemoth’s course for the future. Black won’t be navigating.

The man who co-founded a colossus relinquished the reins in March, four months earlier than expected, citing the strain on his and his family’s health brought on by attention from the media and the inquiry (commissioned by Apollo) into the Epstein matter by the law firm Dechert. (Its report found no evidence that “Black or any employee of the Family Office or Apollo was involved in any way with Epstein’s criminal activities.”)

The abrupt exit coincided with Apollo’s directors learning that years earlier Black had paid a model, Güzel Ganieva, to keep quiet about their affair, a relationship he describes as consensual; he calls her allegations of sexual misconduct a fabrication. If Black had been accused of creating a deceptive balance sheet, he could have hired the best attorneys and dug in for a lengthy investigation. If the issue had been an embarrassing bankruptcy by one of Apollo’s portfolio companies, or outrage over his compensation, or even a tabloid-ready sex imbroglio triggered by a subordinate, Black might have skated through.

Even Milken wormed his way back into polite society despite his stint in an orange jumpsuit and a lifelong ban from the finance industry, making nice via a slew of charitable giving and well-attended annual conferences. Last year Donald Trump pardoned him.

But Milken’s transgression was of the financial kind. Epstein’s crimes skew the entire calculus. Black’s 20-year affiliation with him can’t be erased simply by buying a baseball team and stocking it with expensive players, as Steve Cohen, whose personal stock took a beating when his former hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and agreed to pay the government a record fine of $1.2 billion. Any connection to a child molester leaves an indelible stain, according to Jamie Diaferia, who shepherds clients through public relations

nightmares at Infinite Global in New York.

“There are certain things you can come back from,” Diaferia says. “Being associated with a pedophile is not one of them.”

LEON’S LAST ROAR? Black has become a cautionary tale for all the youngbloods currently amassing buyan-island wealth on tech’s latest big idea.

Like them, the Wall Street chief made a lot of people a lot of money, and pissed off a lot of others along the way. Eventually, what money can buy reaches its limit. Overstep certain boundaries and you spend the end of your career apologizing to people who aren’t listening.

“The Drexel people got away with a lot,” says Nell Minow, a corporate governance expert at ValueEdge Advisors. “That group of people were all about externalizing their costs on the rest of us and thinking they won somehow. And now I hope they’re thinking they can’t do that anymore.”

Mea culpas, alas, are hard to find anywhere. Last year Dartmouth College settled a $14 million class action lawsuit brought by plaintiffs that included 65 Jane Does over sexual misconduct. The suit alleged that over a 17-year period Black’s alma mater turned a blind eye to three male professors whose bad behavior included harassment, groping, and rape. Dartmouth admitted no fault.

Diana Whitney and her group, the Dartmouth Community Against Gender Harassment and Sexual Violence, say the college could make a groundbreaking gesture by renaming Black’s building the Jane Doe Visual Arts Center. It would honor the women who stand up to sexual exploitation. And it would also be a declaration that not even a billionaire philanthropist is too rich or powerful to escape a public reckoning.

The college is in no hurry to put a match to its relationship with Black’s money, but the benefactor has become radioactive, there and elsewhere. For the first time in its history, Apollo is holding executive committee meetings without Leon Black. Maybe that’s the lesson here, if there is one, for the dealmakers of the next generation who say they like to break things. Perhaps if Black were at all a beloved figure, people would give him the benefit of the doubt about the mysteries around his friendship with Epstein.

Perhaps not. Either way, his banishment has shown that being liked still matters. Without that personal highly confident letter, people will still take your money. But they won’t take you.

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GAMESTOP Griffin, who is worth more than $20 billion. Even when Wall Street loses, it wins.

Meanwhile, many Redditors who piled into GameStop—especially when it was trading high—lost money. “The foolishness always comes to an end, and it almost always ends badly for a majority of the retail investors who believe the bullshit,” says Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management and former senior portfolio manager at Omega Advisors. “It’s not rich versus poor. It’s smart versus dumb.”

Or maybe it’s just greed versus greed.

“They want Gabe Plotkin’s money, they want my money, they want Steve Cohen’s money. It’s a simple financial thing,” Left says.

He acknowledges that we are in “the era of the retail investor,” and he hopes those investors will tread carefully, though it’s doubtful they’re listening to him.

“If one group of speculators wants to have a battle of wills with another group of speculators over an individual stock, god bless them,” said Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, during a town hall event in February. “That’s for them to do, and if they make money, fine. And if they lose money, that’s on them.”

It’s an investing lesson learned over and over again—by high-rolling stock pickers with Bloomberg Terminals and by novices trading “stonks” from their couches.

Melvin Capital rebounded and posted a gain of more than 20 percent in February, though it reportedly ended the first quarter with steep losses. Cohen is back on Twitter, as is, inevitably, Musk. GameStop’s stock can still swing wildly on investor whims, and the company is making an effort to turn its business around. Left is determined to stay in the short game, albeit perhaps more quietly for a while. “You can’t tell a bird not to fly,” he said in a video posted online in March.

As for Roaring Kitty, well, he still believes in GameStop and thinks the suits betting against it are wrong, which he told lawmakers at a congressional hearing in February.

“In short,” he said, “I like the stock.”

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 85]

PHARRELL WILLIAMS capped off by a performance during which he shared the stage with Jay-Z, Diddy, and Missy Elliott. The sonic fireworks were punctuated by serious programming: conversations about education, technology, and kindness. Several thousand attended a church service held on the beach. Deepak Chopra spoke, and the artist Kaws created a giant installation on the sand.

What it ended up being was the realization of Williams’s dream: a total audience of 200,000 coming together for a weekend where “there was no violence, only love,” Williams says. “And that had nothing to do with me. It had to do with the fact that the city had the willingness to stand behind the African-American culture and these HBCU students who were just trying to take a break.”

It was a prime example of what Andrés calls Williams’s ability to plant “positive Trojan horses,” where meaningful payoffs emerge from sparkly packages. “Pharrell knows he’s able to penetrate the community to create good, bring people together, and make them feel like they belong,” Andrés says.

Due to Covid-19, Williams was forced to cancel the festival in 2020 and this year. He plans to bring it back in 2022 with a new element, the memorialization of a community member who made the festival possible, his cousin Donovan Lynch. “There will definitely be an ode to him,” Williams says, “because he served Something in the Water. He is always going to be tied to the festival in some way, shape, or form.” His grimace breaks into a bittersweet smile, imagining the possibilities, musical and otherwise.

This is what Pharrell Williams does: meet Black pain with Black joy, to celebrate his community’s perseverance and achievement.

“I never really know where I’m headed until I look back over my shoulder and go, ‘Oh, wow, okay. That seems to be a line, so I must be going that way,’” Williams says. He points backward, then traces an arc forward. “Even still, I wasn’t gifted with that foresight. Do I know where I’m going? I do not.” He nods solemnly, pulls on his cap, and bows his head slightly. “I know I’m meant to serve.”

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 62]

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I N VA L U A B L E The author and Richard Poe co-starred in the Public Theater’s 2017 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on one of the celebrated sets

by David Rockwell featured in his new book, Drama.

HELLO, Old Friend

BY PHYLICIA RASHAD

he Delacorte Theater first cast its spell on me in the summer of 1971.

I went to see Clifton Davis and Raul Julia doing The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and I was hooked. I was at the beginning of my career, and I remember thinking, How do I get to that? Until live theater paused due to the pandemic, I rarely missed a production of Shakespeare in the Park. And when

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it returns on July 6, I’ll be back under that sheltering sky, ready to be mesmerized again.

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, set in a community of West African immigrants in Harlem, is an inspired choice to start the season, not only because a comedy after a year of tragedy is what we need but because community is what the Delacorte offers us. There is an excitement just being there with all these people who have waited outside for hours for tickets. You’re sharing an experience with a crowd you have never met before, whose life stories you don’t know, and that is a beautiful thing.

I learned this when I played Titania in 2017’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a production gorgeously immortalized by architect and set designer David Rockwell in his new book, Drama. To perform outdoors is like stepping into the early days of theater— anything can happen. Once I had to delay my entrance because a family of raccoons was crossing. There I was, in all my finery, waiting on raccoons. Even when it rains, the audience is with you, so taken they won’t leave. Being in the open air buoys you, carries you through the evening. As I stepped onto the stage every night, I thought, Here we go, here we go! PUBLICTHEATER.ORG

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (2017)/PHOTO © JOAN MARCUS

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